


The Search for a Home

by Preciousdragongirl2017



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Angst, Drama, F/M, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 14:07:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 51,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14045910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Preciousdragongirl2017/pseuds/Preciousdragongirl2017
Summary: The most dangerous weapon has just escaped from Alkali Lake and she is heading for Xavier's school. A chance encounter with the mind of Jason Stryker has shown Ultra that the sanctuary she has long yearned for exists. What she doesn't know is that she will meet another survivor - Logan - and the bond they develop will help her learn to trust again.





	The Search for a Home

Silence is one of the most deafening sounds. There is no such thing as nothing. Even deaf people can still feel the roar of fluids in their ears and the pump of blood in their veins. The silence that she tapped into was the only thing that kept her sane, yet it threatened to unhinge her all at the same time.  
Somewhere down the corridor there was a crack in the ceiling through which water leaked with its incessant plinkplinkplink. A faulty fluorescent tube fizzed to itself several turns away. Even the very, very distant hum of all that water added a voice to the supposed silence. She could hear the molecules beating against one another, drumming on the wall of the dam that stemmed their flow. If she listened hard enough, she could almost hear them singing to her. There was a soothing steadiness to their noise, like dipping your head beneath the surface of a pool. After the initial shock to the eardrums, the rumble of water seemed to take a voice of its own with cadences and intonations just like language. She often had conversations with the water in her mind, imagining it answering her in a friendly human voice. She hadn’t heard too many of those in her short life but she had overheard enough television to know something of what it sounded like.  
She lay there on her metal slab, staring at one of the thick chains that fixed it to the wall. Even though she was covered by a threadbare blanket, she knew that it was cold from the way the fog erupted from her nose with every breath. But she couldn’t feel it. The pain in her body gave the illusion of warmth. The only good thing about the blanket – so inconsequential in its substance – was that it covered the blood.  
To say that every breath hurt was a gross understatement. To say that every joint burned with a lifetime’s experience of agony was almost a fantasy. The pain that she felt hadn’t ever been experienced before so there were no words. All the men in the lab had toasted one another as if she was some kind of success. She’d heard them concern themselves briefly with the fact that the last two subjects had died during the process. That should have made her continuing life seem something of a miracle, should have transformed their opinion of her, but nothing had changed. She was still nothing but a piece of meat on a slab. Well, she was a lot more than a piece of meat now.  
Slowly and painstakingly, she commanded her arm to move. It shuffled out from the cover of the blanket as if it was somehow disconnected from her. That was how her body felt now; disconnected. She knew that it would become empowered beyond all comprehension, but right now it didn’t feel like it belonged to her. She gritted her teeth against the protestations from every fibre in her arm and eventually brought it out so that she could look at it. At least the blood had dried now so she looked less like a carcass hung in a butcher’s window. Her eyes traced the sinews in her hand, the veins with their bluish tinge and the protrusions of her knuckles. They all looked the same as before. Her fingers straightened out of the fist they had formed after the procedure. Out of everything, she expected her fingers to look different – malformed, even – but they, too, looked the same as before. They were crippled by pain but on the surface they looked the same. The burnt red stains on her fingertips were the only telltale signs that something evil lurked underneath.   
She had been awake through the whole thing. Many times she had hoped that she would lose consciousness and subsequently block out the agony and injustice. The previous two subjects had volunteered for this. She hadn’t. She had been blackmailed, coerced into proceeding. She wondered whether they had lain on this same bunk, under the same blanket, scrutinising their wounds and had second thoughts now that it was too late. She barely had the energy to think beyond just listening to the silence. She certainly couldn’t think about what had happened only a few hours ago.   
The guard stationed outside her door scraped his chair against the floor and his face flashed into view at the barred window of her cell. His eyes met hers for the briefest of moments before he stepped away again, resuming his position. The tray that he had brought her with her evening rations on was sat exactly where he had left it. He’d been considerate enough to bring the cup of water to her lips to let her drink a little but that had been the extent of his kindness. They knew that she would never die of starvation anyway so uneaten food was never a worry of theirs. She couldn’t die of dehydration either but at least a few sips of water kept her blood from turning to sandpaper in her veins. She hated being treated like a baby but she also hated being nothing more than an experiment.  
This is what you get for trying to do the right thing, that irritating voice in her head said, rising above the din of silence to strike her good and hard. This is what you get for playing the hero. I hope it’s been worth it.

 

   
As soon as the boot connected with her ribcage, she knew that this was going to hurt. Sometimes she wished that she could break bones again because it made everything less complicated. Broken bones were far less traumatic than soft tissue damage.  
The force from the kick sent her careening backwards. Her feet gained too much air and before she knew it, her legs had flipped clean over her head and she was laying face-down in the mud, wheezing into the ground.  
“And she calls herself the Ultimate Mutant!” the soldier called to his comrades. An amused rumble issued through the ranks. “All I see is a prissy little bitch that’s bitten off more than she can chew.”  
The girl called Ultra squeezed her fingers into a fist as she forced her knees up beneath her. Mud squelched out of her grip. She only wished that it was a neck between her fingers rather than innocent mud. They continued to goad her but there was so much rainwater in her ears that she couldn’t hear most of it. She could feel their words souring the air, though.  
She took two, then three, deep breaths to try and steady herself. The soldiers that surrounded her may be dickheads in nature but they were bloody good at their job. If she let her emotions get too far out of line, they would anticipate every single attack she would try and throw at them.   
“I don’t know what the Colonel finds so appealing about her. For someone who hates mutants, he’s certainly put a lot of attention and money into them.”  
Ultra knew that guy; for someone that sounded so anti-mutant, he’d certainly tried to enjoy himself with her when a cold shower wasn’t enough anymore. She couldn’t help grinning as she remembered how he had howled into the floor when her very, very strong foot had crushed the mole-hill in his trousers.   
“If you knew the Colonel like I do then you’d know he hates this one more than the others. How would you feel if some freak of nature blew a hole through the door of your house and tried to destroy everything you’ve worked for?”  
“And she killed Markson and Ward.”  
“Yeah, forgot about that.”  
“Nice to know how much you cared about your teammates, Webber.”  
“Fuck you bra’!”  
“Fuck you right back, you worthless mother!”  
Ultra listened to them, squabbling like four-year-olds. It was the same thing that always happened when these worthless idiots were given free-reign away from a commanding officer. They may have been highly trained at some point but now they were entitled and lazy. Strong, but lazy.  
Suddenly Ultra felt something hot blast a hole in her side. The force of it pushed her over her and onto her back. Swallowing the yowl that threatened to escape, she probed the area. Her fingers came back red.  
“Laughing at us are you, bitch? How’d you like that? The next one’ll be in your fucking head!”  
Any control that Ultra had battled to maintain suddenly cracked. Her mind reached out of its own accord, creating a solid shelf of energy that pushed down into the ground. It flipped her up onto her feet. She looked first to the one that had shot her, his gun still aimed at her. With a single glare, she crushed his skull.  
Before his body had reached the ground, the other soldiers erupted into panic. Some debated with themselves whether to draw their weapons while others didn’t exercise that restraint. Bullets began to fly at her, erratic and poorly aimed. Ultra raised a hand and deflected their trajectory by disturbing their magnetic fields. Then she excited the molecules that comprised the guns themselves and they melted from the soldiers’ hands. Her vision flashed red for a couple of seconds and then she launched herself at them, blurring through the air, too fast for their pitiful, human eyes to comprehend. Then she revealed why she was such as freak. Why she was such a science project.  
Time seemed to stand still for a moment, the soldiers’ eyes transfixed by her outstretched hands. Then her fingers split at the tips, the skin peeling away as one long, gleaming, ominous claw exploded out from each. With a vicious snick sound, the lengths of metal locked into place. She could smell the terror spewing from the soldiers’ pores. Ultra took a great lungful of the blissful aroma and then went to work. When she was finished, the ground was a mess of bodies and parts, and her claws were dripping blood. The air was lank with the smell of death. Ultra took a moment to enjoy it, satiating the more evil sides of her nature. She didn’t feel remorse for any of the dead. They had persecuted her for months, both under orders and not. Besides, they earned their monthly wage torturing her in a laboratory, in the training arenas and out in the field. The carnage swilling about her feet like slurry was the inevitable result.  
Just as Ultra was considering her next move she heard something in the bushes around her then there was a shot. It wasn’t from a gun but it had the same impact. Sharp bolts of energy conducted through her body like a million tiny knives. As she hit the ground for the second time, the only realisation she came to was that the energy certainly wasn’t electricity. This energy robbed her of all motor control, including some higher brain function and as she lay in the mud, sweet-tasting rainwater stinging her eyes and lips, she didn’t have the presence of mind to try and fight her way out.  
A pair of boots splashed through the mess towards her, stopping an inch from her face. When her eyes started to glaze over with that red tinge one boot kicked the blood-soaked mud into her face. The last thing he wanted was his legs blasted off from beneath him. When her eyes decided to go nuclear they had all the impact of two-hundred landmines but none of the subtlety.   
As Ultra writhed, trying to gain enough motor control to wipe the mess from her eyes, her arms were wrenched backwards into a pair of metal glove cuffs that encased her whole hands. Her ankles were chained and hands grabbed her beneath her armpits, dragging her back to base. She was marched past her cell and into the bowels of the facility, deeper than she had ever been before. The air down here was dank and mouldy, stinking of mildew and slow rot. The only view she had was of the floor so she had to rely on her myriad of other senses – far more than the normal six – to tell her where she was.  
The sound of a metal door squealing against its hinges filled her with dread. It sounded like the door to a medieval dungeon. Ultra was dragged inside, slammed down into a chair and re-cuffed around it like she was some kind of rabid animal. Granted, the massacre in the woods was a strong hint as to the fact but, still. She was about to issue a sarcastic retort to her gaolers when she raised her head and saw...  
“Hello my dear.” Colonel William Stryker was a short man with a very-middle-aged paunch. His hair was almost white and his face had more wrinkles than a Pug but the atmosphere around him was terrifying. His cold blue eyes severed the air, burrowing into her as if they could see through anything. Even the soldiers seemed to shiver a little.  
Ultra swallowed hard. It was like looking into the face of the devil and knowing that you had no way out of Hell.   
“Sergeant Coleman tells me that you had quite a time out in the woods today.” He gestured to the wall of security monitors behind him, each flicking randomly as the picture switched between the many cameras keeping a watchful eye on the facility. “Six men dead. You’re clearly enjoying the little toys I gave you. Your training is coming along well.”  
“Exactly why am I being congratulated for killing six men?” she asked, forcing her voice so as to disguise the obvious crack.  
“Oh, don’t misunderstand me; you’re not. But I am impressed that I’ve been able to drill some of the more honourable tendencies you used to have out of that mind. If there’s one thing I pride myself on, it’s my capacity to create a monster.”  
“I am far from a monster.”  
Stryker raised his eyebrows at her and pressed a key on the console behind him. The monitors ceased their flickering and instead displayed various screens emblazoned with text. All of them contained head-shots of some description and all of them heralded family details. Ultra knew exactly what he was showing her them for.  
“Tell that to the families of the men you’ve just killed,” he said, his words ice cold. The sick irony was that Stryker didn’t care about those people any more than he was instructing her to. He just wanted her to display weakness simply so that he could beat it out of her.  
“You say that like you care.”  
“I care very much, my dear. How am I to find new recruits if you take it upon yourself to kill them all?” His southern drawl was almost tender. Ultra hated the way he patronised her by calling her by a pet-name.  
“Maybe recruit some ex-cons. I could do with the challenge,” she replied with a lop-sided grin. Her sharp ears detected an intake of breath from one of the soldiers behind her and his grip tightened on the gun slung across his chest. Stryker’s eyes flicked to him and his smirk broadened.   
“Or perhaps your talents will be suited to ridding the world of mutants altogether.” When her face curled up in disgust, Stryker threw back his head and laughed. “But in order for you to achieve that particular goal, I have to be able to control you.”   
He reached behind him on the console and brought forward a clear phial of viscous fluid, brandishing it like some kind of weapon. But his eyes didn’t gleam with intent. “This is a drug of my own invention. A mind-control agent, it allows me to bend the will of even the strongest mutants. But I fancy that you’re too powerful to feel its effects. You certainly have tested my ingenuity.”  
“How nice to be recognised as special,” Ultra sniped. She knew that her brain chemistry was too far advanced to fall victim to something as underhanded as a mind-control agent.   
Stryker’s expression darkened. “It wasn’t a compliment.”   
He gestured to the guards at the door and there was the sound of activity behind her. Ultra wanted to turn and see what was going on but there was something in Stryker’s eyes that told her not to bother. He didn’t look like an army Colonel but Ultra could tell that he was capable of atrocities far greater than what she’d been through the past few months. It was like experiencing first-hand the presence of a modern-day Hitler.  
“Your physical training is at an end, my dear,” he said as something was wheeled into the room behind her. “Now comes the task of reprogramming your mind, for what good is a weapon that can’t be controlled?”  
A wheelchair slipped into view, carrying a frail man dressed in a soiled hospital gown. He wasn’t strapped to the chair in any visible manner but his contorted posture appeared as if he was restrained somehow. His eyes remained focussed on his lap as one of the soldiers pushed him towards Stryker and then turned the chair to face her. The bones protruded from his face, making him look completely emaciated. His skin was almost translucent from lack of exposure to sunlight. A thick, ugly surgical scar ran from somewhere in his hair down, twisting around his temple and down into his neck. Given the pock-mark dots that ran parallel to the scar, the surgeon hadn’t been concerned with stitching the wound up properly. Then Ultra saw the tubes and machines and phials and bottles that were attached to the man and her heart froze.   
“Mutant 143, formerly known as...”  
“Jason,” she gasped. Her mind flashed images before her eyes of a young, healthy boy with an overly curious mind. Then an aggressively strict father with a soldier’s penchant for discipline. Then the unpleasant result of the boy’s unhinged mind. Ultra slammed her eyes closed over the image of Mrs. William Stryker boring her tormented brains out with a power drill. Ultra could almost taste the blood. Now Stryker junior was nothing more than a science project, just like her.  
Stryker tutted under his breath. “You will learn to keep that intrusive mind to yourself in time,” he said, his words hanging ominously in the air. “Mutant 143 is here to re-educate you.”  
“More like re-indoctrinate me,” Ultra snapped, struggling against her bonds. She could still feel the effects of that tazer vibrating through her body. Despite being held captive by metal, she couldn’t summon the strength of mind to free herself and the thick metal gloves that immobilised her hands rendered her claws useless.  
“Call it what you will, my dear, but the results are the same.” Stryker first eyed Jason with heinous disdain and then bent to whisper something in his ear. That was when the man seemed to come to some form of life. His eyes darted up from his lap to meet Ultra’s green-eyed stare, capturing her in some kind of field that was difficult to break free of. All she could see boring into her mind was one blue eye and one green eye, both belonging to Jason Stryker. Whether it was meant to or not, Stryker’s instructions echoed across their link.  
Enslave her. Hollow her out and make her pliable. Show no mercy.  
The words echoed, amplified by the implied cavernous walls of her mind. Then they were written on the blank canvas in a mixture of blue and green, one colour for each of Jason’s eyes. Then everything went dark in there and his mind control set to work.  
It is the most horrific, violating feeling in the world to feel someone rifling through the layers of your brain, picking at everything that made you an individual and tearing them apart. Ultra could almost feel his fingers burrowing deep inside of her, searching and probing. Her physical body slammed back against her chair in an attempt to get away from him but how could you escape what was inside of you, slowly taking you over?  
Then Jason made the first of many mistakes; he went after her name.  
A person’s name is the first tangible thing that gives them an identity. It is the only thing that can exist in the physical world with any kind of weight. The personality comes second to the name. The process of unhinging someone’s mind has to shred everything that makes them who they are, including their name and personality. But Stryker underestimated the gravity of Ultra’s name. She had two names; the first was her born name, her human name, with which she felt no attachment. She had long since left that life behind her. The second was her born-again name. The name she used now was a direct relation to her mutations – her powers. The name ‘Ultra’ didn’t just identify her to the world, it identified her rank and her abilities. She was the Ultimate Mutant, the only mutant in existence to have developed and mastered every single mutation ever documented along with others that hadn’t. ‘Ultra’ was what classified her as a higher being, higher than Stryker and certainly higher than his weak-minded offspring.  
Ultra could feel Jason’s mental abilities peeling away at the letters of her born-again name, shredding them like quilling paper. But with each tear, her resolve strengthened. As did her urge to play too.  
She could sense Stryker’s concern as she gathered herself in her chair and that was when Jason began the bulk of his attack. Using such force that nearly flung her from her chair, he projected various images into her mind of actions and consequences. Played out against the dark recesses in her head, she saw herself fighting against the soldiers and being murdered for it. She saw herself being attacked, cut up, harvested for experimentation. Anything Jason could concoct in his twisted mind to make her feel vulnerable, he attempted. He even projected variations on the situation that had led to her incarceration. Her friends were gunned down or held for questioning and then eventual torture and death. The screams of the girls shredded her insides. Ultra kept repeating to herself that everything was fiction. None of this was happening and nor had it happened at any point in time. Every time she repeated the words like a mantra, Jason’s hold and influence diminished until his psychic tether was little more than a hair’s breadth.  
Ultra opened her eyes then and saw the strain on the man’s face. The machines and tubes were working over time, whatever fluid they were harvesting or exchanging bubbling like a witch’s cauldron. The glow from the bottles was like something from a Lon Chaney movie. He was weak and pathetic, stripped of his strength by the father that hated and feared him.   
Her own mind grappled the psychic link between them just as Jason was about to sever it. This time his mind was filled with her perfectly matched eyes.  
“Now it’s my turn to play,” she said with a smirk that made Stryker grip the console behind him. It was a crucial moment of weakness that she exploited, forcing into Jason’s mind with the same kinds of images that he had tried to inflict on her. The only difference was that Ultra had a more learned hand; she used his actual experiences against him, bringing to light his darkest fears, regrets and crimes. She watched his body begin to tremble, those mismatched eyes watering. He didn’t have the presence of mind or emotion to cry. Then the fluid exchanges in the machines ground to a halt and, with a sharp intake of breath, Jason slumped over in his wheelchair.  
She knew that she had surprised even the great William Stryker when she broke contact with Jason’s mind. His face was pale, almost grey, and he couldn’t disguise the fact that he was breathing heavily. He hadn’t anticipated exactly how much power she had stored within her. The soldiers removed her without a word.  
“Did I scare you, William?” Ultra called as she was dragged away like a dead carcass. “You will never be able to control me. You’ll have to kill me, my dear.”   
She continued to howl with laughter as the soldiers dragged her back down the corridor. Her voice echoed off the bare walls, hopefully reverberating back to Stryker’s control room where he would hear how he had failed. She wanted to emasculate him, undermine his authority and his very existence. The best way to torture a man, after all, was to laugh at him.  
His soldiers certainly didn’t take kindly to her insubordination. As soon as they had opened the door to her cell, they both hefted her weight and flung her inside like she was nothing but a bundle of wet laundry. She was still laughing as she hit the wall, the impact disturbing her lungs. It couldn’t exactly knock the wind out of her but the soft, squidgy tissue sloshed a little which made her feel a little punch-drunk. Her gaolers just turned and left her where she had fallen, arms still trussed behind her back and her ankles still shackled. As she hauled herself onto her knees, she watched them leave. She had proven a very serious point tonight; that she couldn’t be controlled. No matter what method Stryker and his team of sadistic Mengeles attempted, the only way she would succumb was through death. She didn’t know why but that thought had her laughing again, as if Jason had actually succeeded in his goal to unhinge her mind.  
Throughout her life, people had tried to control Ultra. Her parents were the original ones and she had long escaped their clutches. Her vehement resistance to control was what triggered her mutations in the first place. She remembered being locked in the attic as a child, surrounded by shadowy, dusty boxes and mouse droppings. She remembered the way her arm throbbed where her father had gripped her too tightly and how she had banged her head on one of the low-hanging beams when he had thrown her inside. The shadows had swirled around her, tormenting her. They had laughed at her tears and attempts to get either her mother or father to unlock the attic door. Then something had snapped in her brain and her entire life had changed. It started with just one ability. She could never remember which one it was because before she had gotten used to that first one, there were two – and then three – and then three suddenly became ten. Every time her emotions hit a peak it triggered something else.  
Remembering the torment of her younger years ignited that simmering fire in her belly and, with a growl of effort, she tore herself free of her bonds. Most of the metal melted away but there were a few fragments that exploded across the room. Thankfully the effects of whatever they shot her up with in the field didn’t last very long. Then she sat cross-legged on the floor and wondered how everything had come to this. How had she gone from an ordinary English girl to an all-powerful mutant with a price on her head?

   
Another sunset. Another day over.  
Low Maxwell watched the stunning display of fiery colours as the sun succumbed to the other hemisphere. Darkness encroached on the void and birds began their evensong. He heaved a sigh, leaning heavily on the windowsill with his chin in his palm. The leaded window was swung wide to let the evening air in and he filled his lungs with the clear country air.  
Low had never thought himself to be a countryside fellow. His mind worked turbulently, just like the bustling cities, but his body always twitched and went into spasm if he was too restricted. He was a creature that was never to feel fulfilled because he was torn between two existences. Low had always loved the city because of its opportunity and for its thrum of activity, twitching and spasms aside. The city was where you could meet like-minded souls. Like her.  
He didn’t actually remember how he became so involved with the Freedom Fighters. It seemed to have happened overnight. One day he was the new rookie, running the dirty errands and taking everyone else’s shit and then the next he was right on top. Of course, Lilo Watchanali ran their little band of vandals, thieves and terrorists but their followers didn’t trust her. She was too fiery, too passionate and therefore too unpredictable. Too much of a liability. Low had been the calm, sensible one that everyone trusted. He had Lilo’s ear for one, but the second, shady reason was because he had shared her bed on occasion. He always had been a sucker for Samoan blood.  
He would have been startled by the feeling of a hand at the nape of his neck if he hadn’t been monitoring her approach.  
“What a beautiful evening,” Nora said as she moved to stand beside him. She gave his neck a friendly pinch like she always did when they were alone and then folded her arms across her chest.  
Low turned to look at her porcelain features. The way the sun’s dying colours danced across her face and lit up her eyes made her look very elfin. In normal daylight you would easily pass her over in the street for looking plain and inconsequential, but since her mutation only bloomed at night, so did Nora. In spite of himself, Low actually smiled at her.  
“You would know all about that wouldn’t you, Nora?”  
“Yes, I suppose I would,” she answered with a small, girlish laugh. Then she punched him once in the shoulder. “Every night you always watch the sun go down.”  
“For reasons that you know all about.”  
Low could feel Nora’s eyes on him then, those pale blue, beseeching eyes that seemed to hollow you out and see right into the depths of your soul.   
“Yes, but I always like hearing the truth from your own lips rather than my mind.”  
He opened his mouth as if to speak but then faltered, the words freezing on the tip of his tongue. He simply closed his mouth again.  
“You miss her,” Nora said, answering her own question. “We all do.”  
Low heaved a small sigh, inwardly loathing her for her insight. Hearing Nora say the words out loud made it all seem truer. It was like a cancer patient bravely fighting disease without ever being able to admit to what they were fighting. Losing Ultra was his version of a cancer.   
“Am I that obvious?” he asked, knowing the answer before Nora could give it.  
“Come on Low, we all knew that you two were getting closer as we planned the Alkalai Lake attack, and that’s not counting the weeks of mooning before then. As soon as she joined us, I knew that you’d taken a shine to her.”  
“She was just so different, so powerful but so normal at the same time.” It took him a few seconds to realise that he had started speaking about her in the past tense. It wasn’t fair to her because none of the Freedom Fighters knew that she had definitely been killed by the Alkalai Lake military detail, but neither had they received confirmation that she was alive. Surely with Ultra’s uncharted abilities she would have found some way to contact them, even if just to let them know she was OK.  
“You know that we would go back for her in a heartbeat,” Nora whispered, snaking a sympathetic arm around his shoulders. She squeezed him gently, reading his thoughts before he could guard them. Then he felt guilty because Nora was his best friend in the world. Why would he feel like he had to hide anything from her?  
“I just wish I knew for sure what had happened. It’s killing me, always guessing.”  
“I know but at some point you have to let her go.”  
Low knew that better than Nora, better than any of his comrades, but it was a lot harder to do in practise. He couldn’t help letting his mind wander back to the first time he’d seen her. She was this prissy, standoffish little madam, fresh as a newly minted bill, but her eyes concealed a struggle that was years old and that had left plenty of scars. All she had to her name was a small duffel bag that held three changes of clothes and one book; Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë. She had protected that bag like a lioness if anyone tried to take it out of her sight, even if that person was Lilo. Everyone else had found it incredibly odd before they realised that Ultra didn’t have anything left in life and if she lost that bag then she would have lost her only ties to the world.   
With no money and nowhere else to go, Lilo had inducted Ultra into the Freedom Fighters. Their leader had seen Ultra’s potential long before her massive array of mutations had been realised. Once they learned of her power, Lilo had brought forward the Alkalai Lake attack. The Fighters had long since heard rumours of the ungodly experiments that were conducted at the facility and Lilo was desperate to level the place. She had made it her mission in life to eradicate anything and everything that would bring harm to mutants and Alkalai Lake was the biggest threat. Trying to take down that facility was like trying to bring down Olympus, but with Ultra fully on board it would be a walk in the park.   
That was where Low had come in; as Lilo’s second-in-command, it was up to him to strategise with their most powerful weapon and that had started everything. Until then, Ultra had been seen as this volatile, tempestuous creature with a fearsome temper. Low saw the vulnerability in her. He saw the way she tended their wounded, if there ever was any, and he saw how she tended the sick, of which there were many. Most of the Freedom Fighters were Fresh; their powers had only just manifested and they hadn’t gotten control of them. Ultra tutored and supported them during the transition and gained a great deal of respect for that, especially from Amara, whose volcanic magma ability regularly acted up depending how Mother Earth felt on particular days. She was only fourteen, just a baby, and Ultra treat her as such, mothering her and nurturing her.   
Low had fallen in love with her. The only night they had spent together was a fevered one on the rooftop of the building that the Fighters had taken to squatting in. Something had told Low that he should make the most of that night because there was no guarantee any of them would make it out of their next mission alive. They almost hadn’t but because of Ultra’s sacrifice they had been freed. When the military at Alkalai Lake had overpowered the Fighters, Ultra had offered herself up. The boss-man had thought she was valuable for some particular reason but Low hadn’t figured out what. He just dreaded to think that she was being subjected to experimentation.  
For weeks after their failed attempt, he had tried to convince Lilo to go back but she had refused. She was convinced that Ultra had been executed in their place. Besides, why would Lilo risk the safety of her crew just to recover one mutant that hadn’t served with them very long? Considering their mutual history, he didn’t want to admit his feelings to Lilo because that would have sealed Ultra’s fate. Fiery and passionate Lilo was, but she was also jealous and vengeful. While Ultra could more than handle herself, Low didn’t want Lilo’s inevitable grudge match destroy the Freedom Fighters when there was more work still to be done.  
“I know I have to let her go Nora, but I just can’t do it. We should have gone back for her.”  
“Yes we should but we can’t dwell on that now. All we can do is hope that she is alive, safe and will someday make it back to us.”  
   
The floor of Ultra’s cell was a lot more comfortable than her metal cot so she decided to stay there long after the guards had continued on their rounds. Her usual doorman had been exchanged for a surly new one that she hadn’t seen before. He didn’t check on her as much which suited her just fine. It made her feel a little less like a goldfish lazing around its bowl.  
As she sat there, so still like a statue with the cold eating deeper and deeper into her body, she began to worry about that look on Stryker’s face when she had disabled Jason. He hadn’t been able to keep the fear out of his expression and while at the time it had thrilled her, now she was beginning to get concerned. It wouldn’t take a great deal for him to decide to vote her off the island forever and she feared that she may have tipped the balance.  
Ultra remembered the first time someone had looked at her like that; it had been long ago, almost a lifetime past, when she had first encountered a girl who went by the name of Berserker. On first glance, the girl seemed pretty normal; long, flowing brown-black hair, hazel eyes and a deeply olive complexion. She had that cool exterior and raging, passionate core that betrayed her native Hawaiian heritage. She had the ability to control electrical currents, which was perfect for her group of cohorts considering they had taken to squatting in most of the places they lived in. Berserker also had the unusual habit of glowing in the dark, which was great if ever the lights went out or you found yourself in a place with no lights at all, but not so great when you walked in on her with her latest beau. Ultra had made that mistake a few times. She had long gotten out of the habit of knocking before entering a room.  
Remembering that night brought Low’s face to her mind. Then his long, rugged blonde hair and the powerful upper-body, and then the way they had felt lying together on the scorching cold concrete of the roof of that building. God, they had blazed hot together. He’d held her so tightly afterwards as if he never wanted to let her go. Then the assault on Alkalai Lake happened and everything changed.  
Ultra felt that familiar ache in her chest and banished Low’s presence from her mind. He was the reason she had gotten caught that night. Well, Berserker was the reason of course but Low hadn’t helped.   
The three of them had been laying the charges out in the eastern quarter of the facility when guards had come up on them. They had sprung from out of nowhere. Low was too far underground for his Elementor ability to be of any use; there was far too much concrete around and commanding water inside a dam would have been suicide. Berserker – Lilo – had turned her influence to the fluorescent tubes and had shocked the shit out of the guards but not in as subtle a way as Ultra had planned. She had immediately summoned her psychic abilities and had planned to fell them with a massive brain-shock blast but Lilo always had been the trigger-finger. Ultra’s way would have preserved their stealth and would have enabled the mission to succeed, whereas Berserker had lived up to her namesake.   
They hadn’t had time to lay all the charges before they were interrupted and it had been too dangerous for them to continue so the three of them had immediately resorted to their evacuation plan. Muller and Trix were waiting at the perimeter for them, operating the coms, while Galleon, Sonny, Hail-Mary, Beth-Anne, Lupus and Kabil were deployed in various wings of the facility, trying to complete their mission. Lilo had rounded the corner first with Low following second. They hadn’t a clue that a contingent of eighteen soldiers were bearing down on them until they were greeted with weapons fire. Lilo had, of course, pitched them into darkness by firing up her bolts but several bullets had strafed.   
It was as if it all happened in slow-motion. Ultra was mostly shielded by the wall but Lilo and Low were both exposed. Before she could deflect the bullets, one of them hit Low in the shoulder and he went down. Lilo managed to avoid the onslaught, distracting the troops by baffling their retinas, but they were a man down and were therefore a lot slower. Before they could get Low to his feet, one girl under each arm, the rest of the soldiers had arrived and forced them to their knees.  
Ultra remembered the eerie red glow of the emergency lighting and the way the soldiers parted reverently to let their commander through. He hadn’t looked like much even then, dressed in plain black slacks and a thick, black corduroy jumper with the hint of a grey collar poking above the neck. He certainly didn’t look military but he had that air of power about him, along with a whole lot else that Ultra didn’t like. In her naivety, she thought she could take him down.  
Stryker had scrutinised them for a moment, almost sneering at Low as he wheezed and huffed against the bullet in his shoulder. Then he had turned to his sergeant and had flicked a dismissive hand at his captives.  
“They’re no use to me. Get rid of them.”   
He started walking away but Ultra grabbed his attention. “You don’t really want to authorise that.”  
Stryker turned very, very slowly with a sadistic grin on his face. “And why not?”  
She had mirrored his smile as she leapt into action. The soldiers that were holding her to her knees were blasted to either side of the corridor, knocked out cold by the concrete walls. She disarmed the guard holding Low and knocked him unconscious with his own gun before doing the same to the guard with Lilo. Then she turned, readying a pulse that would have killed every guard in front of her, including Stryker, but was stopped by the blast from a tazer. Lilo had tried to rush to her aid but was kicked aside by a guard that had recovered too quickly.  
As Ultra convulsed against the electric shocks, Stryker walked over to her and fondled her face with feigned affection. “My, you are a pretty thing for a mutant.”  
She was in half a mind to spit at him but couldn’t summon the saliva. He bent closer to her and locked her in a cold-eyed gaze. He was just scrutinising her, taking every bit of her in, but his eyes told her a deeper story. Ultra never liked delving into people’s heads but sometimes, even now, she couldn’t help it. Stryker had been a little too open, too unguarded that day and she had seen the reason behind his sadism, and the reason why he hated mutants.   
“You shouldn’t be so insulting towards us considering...” she trailed off, her voice slowly steadying as the effects of the tazers wore off.   
“Don’t pretend to know anything about me,” he sneered at her.  
“I know a great deal,” she answered as he stood up and started to walk away. “Especially about your son.”  
Stryker stopped dead, mid-step. “I don’t have a son,” he said without looking at her.  
“You cannot deny him. He resides right here in this facility. You have designated him with a number but his name is Jason Stryker. You hoped that he could be cured of his abilities and took him to the Xavier school for help but he couldn’t do anything. So you decided to experiment on and exploit him instead.” Ultra paused for effect before adding, “And you call yourself a father.”  
“My son is dead,” Stryker snarled over his shoulder.  
“He’s alive. You’ve silenced him for most of his life but he is very much alive.”  
The man whipped round, his eyes blazing fire and his mouth practically foaming. “My son is dead!”  
“No William, your wife is dead but your son lives!”  
In a single, deceptively athletic bound, Stryker was forcing his face into hers just as the resounding slap came from nowhere. Ultra’s head jerked to the left, cracking the vertebrae in her neck. Stars exploded in her eyes and all she could hear past the blood pounding in her head was her attacker’s heaving, panting breath. She was so stunned that she didn’t digest his following words but they would haunt her in the months that followed.  
“If you want to join your friends in the afterlife then keep goading me, little girl.”  
Ultra later learned that Sonny and Lupus had been gunned down, dead, when the mission had unravelled. The others were still alive but the fact that they had lost loyal comrades weighed heavily on her heart. It took a while for the news to sink in, far longer than her first memorable encounter with her tormentor had lasted.  
As Ultra slowly turned her head back towards him, Stryker’s eyes caught sight of something and they widened in a mixture of shock, surprise and greed. Her bottom lip had split from the force of his blow and was slowly trickling blood. One of the first abilities Ultra had noticed in herself was that of accelerated healing. It was probably her very first and earliest occurring ability because she had always healed instantly from cuts, bruises, knocks and scrapes as a child. But as the gash healed before his eyes, Stryker’s shock scared her more than his violence.   
“My God!” he gasped, dabbing at the blood with his finger. The blood remained but the cut was long gone in an instant. “It can’t be!”   
If a man could possibly have seen dollar signs it was in that one moment. Suddenly his disgusted expression changed and it was as if Ultra had become a commodity. Then she was commanded away. Soldiers dragged her to the cell that would become her home and abandoned her in the dark and in the cold. She had screamed herself hoarse trying to get someone to tell her what was going on. It was only afterwards that she would get to bargain for her friends’ safety. She had traded her freedom for theirs, but the price was so much larger than that.  
In the darkness of the cell, Ultra held her hands in front of her and released the adamantium claws that she had been cursed with; ten inches of solid, indestructible metal devised by Stryker and his scientists. That was the price she had paid.  
Memories threatened to flood her. Memories about the process, the agony that followed and the aching realisation that her suffering would never end once she entered the training program all lingered on the fringes of her mind, demanding her attention. Ultra turned a blind eye to them all, placating them with the notion that one day she would deal with them. For now they had to be filed away so that she could focus her energy on more pressing matters – like how to get the fuck out of this place.  
The only memory that she did allow passage was that about the Xavier school. That name was constantly at the forefront of Stryker’s mind, as if it was the hub of his obsession with mutants. The fact that he had taken Jason there for help made Ultra wonder if perhaps this new facility would be able to help her. She would have worried about swapping one cell for another if her mind wasn’t flooded with a kind of warmth and comfort when she mulled over the name. Xavier. Xavier. Charles Xavier. Something gentle, welcoming and nurturing existed in that place. Ultra felt her soul connect with it deeply and it ignited a yearning to seek solace there. She just hoped that it wouldn’t turn out to be a fantasy concocted by a mind unhinged by pain and anguish.  
Then something dark and evil hit her squarely in the psyche. Just at the moment that she was finding comfort, her existence was threatened again. This time Stryker was pissed, and this time she wasn’t going to survive.  
Closing her eyes, Ultra focused on every sound from the minutest ruffle of fabric to the patter of rats’ feet in the spillway. In her mind she traversed the corridors of the facility until she reached Stryker’s office. That was when his voice flooded her mind.  
“Sergeant, you know what needs to be done.”  
“Surely there must be another way to control her, William. She is such an investment to us it would be stupid to jeopardise that.” Ultra remembered that voice; it was one of the pansy-ass scientists that Stryker kept on-staff to develop new uses for the adamantium.  
“What good is she as an investment if she cannot be controlled?” Stryker shouted, slamming his hands down on something solid. “Jason was our last option. She is too powerful and therefore too much of a liability. Sergeant, take your men and terminate her.”  
“The Wolverine was a success and could still be re-indoctrinated if he was located. Yuriko is living proof that under the proper conditions, your plan to build a team of super-mutants for military use could be a reality. Don’t squander this opportunity; mutants with a healing ability are not easy to come by. For all we know, she could be the last.”  
“No. I have made my decision. Ultra will be executed tonight.”  
“William, I can’t just stand by and let this happen!”  
The deafening sound of two gunshots baffled her ears, startling her out of focus. Panting for breath, Ultra sent a prayer skyward for the scientist. He was only defending her because of the amount of money she represented, but his chivalry was rather flattering nonetheless.   
This is it, she thought to herself. No turning back now.  
It didn’t take long for the soldiers to amass. Her sharp ears detected movement a few quadrants away. She could feel their intentions like sour lemon juice in the air. It seemed that now was the time to put all her training to good use.  
Ultra calculated that they were about three minutes away. She faced the door, focussing unblinkingly on the thick, wrought metal door with the bars across the porthole that made her feel like a caged animal. She cracked her knuckles with a crunching, bone-popping echo. She was going to make damn certain that Stryker would regret ever giving her claws. Slowly, Ultra slipped into that other mental state that she had. It was like zoning out into a kind of meditation that allowed her to tap into any number of her abilities simultaneously. Ordinarily, she could do so at will but when her emotions were heightened or when the odds were stacked against her she needed a little extra focus. She felt the power come to the forefront of her being in a great surge. It had been a while since she felt in control of her fate. Stryker thought that he had the upper hand but he forgot that he was dealing with a mutant unlike any other. Tonight she was going to show him that he wasn’t all that.  
Ultra tried to arrange the cot like she was lying there sleeping as the soldiers drew nearer. It was an entry-level ploy but you couldn’t beat a good old classic distraction. Then she shorted out the light.  
The hydraulic doors at the far end of the corridor slid open with a hiss and she heard the guard outside her door scramble to attention. There were at least six soldiers marching along the Green Mile, all heavily armed. Their armoury included those strange tazers that had knocked her for six. Ultra definitely didn’t want to tangle with those again.  
She crouched in the corner beside the door. She was in a perfect position; small enough to squash in tightly but on the side that the door didn’t block when it opened. The second the first gun was inserted through that portal, the bearer would meet his maker or get sent to the hell of legend.  
This time the whole world fell silent. Staring death in the face was a very solitary exchange.  
Ultra zoned out so that when the door eventually opened, it did so in the slowest motion her eyes could have registered. There was no plan apart from fight long and hard to get the hell out of this place. She wanted to put as much distance between her and Stryker as possible, if she couldn’t kill him outright. It probably would have been far easier for her to shape-shift into a small animal or insect and just run right out through that open door but where was the fun in that? Ultra wanted to look at her reflection one day and be proud to say that she had fought her way out of the deepest circle of Hell. Yes, she was running but she would not be a coward about it. She would look her tormentors in the eye as she killed them and then she would seek salvation elsewhere. With her head held high.  
The first soldier began to step cautiously into the room. Ultra couldn’t hear anything besides her own heartbeat racing in her ears. He turned his weapon on the mound on the metal slab and levelled the muzzle to shoot. That was when Ultra pounced. Her claws sliced free and she lunged, swiping down on the soldier’s arms. The gun fell to the floor, as did everything below his elbows. Before he could even register pain, she ducked in front of him as his comrades opened fire, tearing the cell apart with their bullets. She used his jerking, thrusting body as a human shield until they paused in their assault and then she shoved the body back through the door. Some of the soldiers scattered out of the way but some were distracted by bearing its weight. That was when Ultra launched herself out of her cell, legs, fists and claws flailing in the well-rehearsed martial arts style that Stryker and his team of instructors had indoctrinated her with. In a matter of seconds, she had cut down the contingent of men, painting the corridor in blood.  
Then she simply turned and walked away. It would take several minutes for the carnage to be found but by then Ultra would be gone. With a simple electromagnetic pulse, she crippled the facility. They couldn’t see her and they couldn’t instruct their people. All she had to do was walk right through the front gates.  
And that is precisely what she did.  
   
Rogue languished in the steaming hot waters of the indoor pool, floating on her back and breathing deeply against the troubles of the day. Students splashed about in the middle area, probably fooling around when they were supposed to be paying attention to Hydra’s synchronised swimming session. That would probably explain why the water was warmer than normal. The swimming coach’s ability to manipulate water – and breathe under it – would be handy in a tsunami but, when dealing with distracted teenagers, it made her control slip enough for the pool to become a sauna.  
Rogue had never been interested in swimming as a sport, or even as an art form. Synchronised swimmers were supposed to be the epitome of grace and elegance in the water, but they resembled robots with fried circuits rather than mermaids. Perhaps professional synchronisers looked more coherent than the half-tired, dumb-ass kids that were splashing one another on purpose. She was just more content to float around in the water with her eyes closed, letting the heat sooth away her stress.  
It had been a really gruelling day. Final exams were racing up fast and Storm’s history class was certainly giving her plenty to be concerned about. History was never Rogue’s strong suit, she much preferred biology. Then again, biology was a sore subject with her too but that was more for personal reasons than academic. She tried to remember everything that the Professor had talked to her about during their session today but she often found it hard to stay awake. That deep, soothing English accent of his was enough to put anyone to sleep. It helped the hypnosis aspect of their tutorials but it didn’t exactly aid her memory retention. There was something about closing her eyes and focussing on her power as a physical entity within her body. She had to find it and then suppress it. Hopefully then she’d be able to touch people for longer than a microsecond before her ability tried to suck the life right out of them.  
“Hey Rogue!”  
The voice distracted her before the image of that boy convulsing on her bed filled her with its usual guilt. That had happened years ago but the memories were still as fresh as if it had happened yesterday, or the day before.  
She dropped her feet and stood up in the water, looking over her shoulder to where her boyfriend was waving at her, a towel bundled under his arm. Rogue grinned at him and swam over to where he was stood.   
“You’d better get out of there before you start to resemble one of those idiots,” Bobby said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the synchronised swimming team, all of whom were panting and fanning their red faces.  
The water was definitely getting hotter but Rogue liked it that way. The feeling of heat skewering into your body had a knack for making you forget your earthly troubles. Of course, the second that she climbed out and stepped into the towel that Bobby carefully covered her with, hear head began to flood with everything she had been trying to block out. Then she realised exactly how hot the water was when she felt the cool breeze of air conditioning. It felt like she’d stepped from a sauna into an ice cave.  
“You could take pity on them,” she said, batting her eyelashes at him.  
Bobby smiled that boy band smile and crouched down beside the edge of the pool. He dipped his finger into the water; a seemingly banal gesture but it had the desired effect. Rogue saw the cooling energy pass through the water like a wave, stripping the surface of its steam in an instant. The swimmers heaved a sigh of relief, some of them even calling thanks to their saviour. Bobby just waved at them and then ushered Rogue into the changing rooms with a hand at the small of her back.  
At moments like these, the girl wished that they could touch skin on skin without her sucking the life out of him. She thought the same thing whenever she caught herself watching his lips as he talked. She thought very different things when she saw the other girls with their boyfriends, kissing and fondling in a dark corner or a seemingly deserted part of the grounds. Hell, just being able to hold his hand without gloves would have been nice. Hopefully all these private sessions with the Professor weren’t going to be a waste of time.  
Rogue caught on to the fact that Bobby was watching her as they walked side by side. His eyes were full of that knowing look that she knew very well. He knew exactly what she was thinking about – and what she was wishing. He had spent so much energy in trying to make her believe that he was different, that he wasn’t bothered about the typical boyfriend-girlfriend stuff and that just being with her and being able to call her his girlfriend was enough. Their relationship was deep, meaningful and going to go the distance. But Rogue just couldn’t believe him. It was very easy for him to say all those things but she often caught him gazing longingly at the other couples at the school. Whenever she met him after his mechanics tutorial with Scott Summers she always noticed how Bobby would watch Scott whenever Jean Grey was with him. They were two of Professor Xavier’s first students and had been together as long as anyone could remember. Even when Logan – the Wolverine – had taken up residence and had threatened their idyll, they had stood the test. Rogue knew that Bobby wanted that – the physical stuff. He may never admit it to her but she knew.  
He cleared his throat awkwardly, as if he knew that he’d been caught red handed. “We’re all going to go and play foosball in the games room later. Do you fancy a chance at beating me?”  
He was over-compensating and they both knew it.   
“Sure,” Rogue said with a shrug. She’d better master these damn meditation sessions. And soon.  
   
Charles fought to maintain his psychic link but Logan was starting to fight it. His body had begun to jerk and twitch as if he was only a few seconds away from clawing his way out of his own skin. Clearly the memories that Charles was dredging were more than he could handle right now.   
A small, undisciplined, unprincipled part of himself wanted to stay deeply bedded in Logan’s psyche. Charles desperately wanted to uproot the secrets of the Wolverine’s past and, most importantly, the entire story behind those marvellous adamantium claws of his. William Stryker’s Weapon-X programme was threatening the future and longevity of mutants and Charles felt it was his duty to unravel the mysteries. But he couldn’t bear the thought of Logan’s trauma. He may have been in a deep trance and wouldn’t necessarily remember the stresses he was feeling now, but his experiences under Charles’ care would echo through. He broke the connection when Logan suddenly regressed back to the agony of the Weapon-X process. Somehow the burning hot pain managed to travel through the psychic link and resonated deeply within Charles’ body as sure as if he was the one strapped into the tank.  
“I think that’s enough for tonight’s session,” he said, panting slightly. He flexed his trembling fingers a few times to reassure himself that he was back in his own, partially paralysed body.  
Logan’s breathing instantly returned to normal and his flailing, thrashing arms stilled. There was still a glossy sheen to his skin from the stress but otherwise he appeared to be back to normal.   
“Woah, what a trip,” Logan growled as he cracked his neck and his spine. It was as if he was realigning the bones after a thorough going over with a mallet. “Did you find anything new?”  
Charles flicked the console of his electric wheelchair and manoeuvred himself over to the large leaded window that overlooked the sweeping green lawns and the dense woodland that comprised the Xavier family legacy. He had grown up within these four walls and had exercised in those same grounds. He massaged his ghostly, unmoving legs and thought about how much had changed since he was a boy.  
“No Logan,” he replied, trying to push the fact that the pain had gotten through to him for the first time from his mind. “Just more of the same. I don’t think that you want to remember and, from what I’ve seen so far, I don’t blame you at all. It was a horrific, deeply traumatic event.”  
“No shit,” Logan mumbled as he tugged on his weather-worn leather jacket. “I’m heading out. Thanks for...” He let the words hang in the air and Charles knew that the ‘for nothing’ didn’t need to be verbalised.  
“I’m sure our next session will yield better results.”  
The words tripped out of his lips without sounding rehearsed. Charles wasn’t optimistic that Logan’s very guarded mind held the answers to all his questions. Some hidden defence mechanism in the man’s mind was protecting him from the worst of his memories. The most Logan could remember was beginning the process of having liquid adamantium injected into his body and grafted to his skeleton, and the subconscious memory of being toasted as a successful experiment. He also had flashbacks to the pain but that formed the bulk of what his mind was keeping secret from him. As tough as he was, Logan was very vulnerable beneath the facade and his internal self knew that.   
Charles Xavier just wished that, for once, he could be one step ahead of the enemy. Stryker needed to be stopped but that couldn’t happen until Charles knew precisely what kind of enterprise he was rising up against.  
He massaged his temples gently against the threat of a headache and watched as the day grew older. The light began to dim, the sun sinking below the canopy of trees. He leaned forward and cracked open the window to let some of the burnt aromas into his office. That was when he smelt something different. Every single one of his many senses instantly perked up, as if he’d drugged them with a mega dose of caffeine. Somewhere, deep in the bowels of the institute, Charles could sense Jean Grey, his protégé, tapping into the same sense as he. It was understandable considering they shared similar abilities. Both of them knew that something was coming.  
His eyes darted about the grounds as if what he sensed was just about to slip into sight but he knew that it was still very, very far away. But whatever it was left shock waves in the air like ripples in the water after a pebble had fallen. This was more than a simple ripple, though; this was like the aftershock of an earthquake. He couldn’t sense its direction yet but experience told him that it was coming on a collision course with the institute. But yet he didn’t feel any compulsion to lock the place down. Even if he’d have placed the school on Defcon One it wouldn’t help. Whatever it was that was coming wouldn’t let anything stand in its way.  
And it was powerful.  
   
Logan was going to head out for a beer but changed his mind. While the idea of stealing the weasel with the sunglasses’ motorcycle – again – filled him with a sense of amusement, in truth he just couldn’t muster the energy. His little mind-trip with the Professor had worn him out and his body felt sluggish. If he stood still long enough, he felt like he was drowning in his own weight and it wasn’t a feeling that Logan liked all that much. Then, of course, there was the sound of kids laughing and messing around in what seemed like every room between him and the door so he chose the easier option; he turned on his heel and headed to his room on the third floor.  
There was nothing in the bedroom that denoted it as owned in any capacity. There were no family photographs in gilt frames, no trinkets on the nightstand and certainly nothing on top of the dresser. He had imagined Jean primping and polishing – even though she wasn’t the primping and polishing type – before the mirror countless times but that wasn’t going to happen outside of his fantasies. She was busy gazing through the looking glass in Scott’s room. That weasel with the sunglasses. Man, Logan hated him. He respected him, fair enough, but hated him all the same.  
Logan ducked into one of the cupboards and opened the door to the mini cooler concealed inside. Pulling out a beer, he popped the cap and took a good, long swig. It was barely cold but it did the trick, warming his belly and going some way to calm his nerves. He hated those sessions with the Professor where he allowed the old guy to poke around his brain for shits and giggles. It always left him kind of vibrating afterwards, as if he’d been electrically charged and could glow in the dark as a result. He’d been zapped a fair few times in battle with Xavier’s people so the feeling bared some similarity.  
Taking care not to spill his drink, Logan collapsed onto the bed. Staring up at the ceiling, he tried to empty his mind. He didn’t want to think about anything tonight. He just wanted to drift off to sleep and try and avoid a nightmare of the lab experiment kind. In order to do that, he had to try and get a little shit-faced, hence the Bud. If the Professor didn’t come up with some results soon then it would be time to move on. Logan didn’t like staying in one place too long for fear of putting down roots. He’d been at the institute long enough and his feet were getting mightily itchy.   
As he gazed at the ceiling and the way the light from the pretentious chandelier played with the few shadows in the room, Logan could hear the low rumble of activity emanating through the many floors and walls. He couldn’t make out the details but there were lots of voices all jumbled together, talking, laughing, shouting. Some were fooling around with friends while others were arguing. Logan took another swig of beer and closed his eyes. Maybe there was a time, long ago in the past that he couldn’t remember, that he belonged somewhere and to someone. Maybe there was even a time when he had a proper name, not just one that had been cooked up for him. It felt like he had been disconnected from the world for all of his life because it was the only life he had known. The thought of something different – a different truth – lurking somewhere in the barricaded doors of his psyche seemed almost alien. He liked to dream, though.   
For once Logan didn’t dream about the lab. He didn’t dream about the headless, faceless scientists and military officials toasting champagne over his submerged body. He didn’t even dream about almost collapsing in that damp tunnel, covered in blood and in the worst pain he’d ever felt. This time he dreamt about a family. He dreamt that there was one person in his life who knew everything about him, including what he’d gone through, and who accepted all of it. She wasn’t a romantic interest even though she was stunningly beautiful, but she was someone to share his life, his troubles and his joys with. He slept soundly for the first time that he could remember.  
That is, until the alarms went off.  
It was like someone had taken two hundred thousand power drills to every wall in the mansion at the exact same moment. Logan jack-knifed out of bed with his beer bottle still in hand. He’d hoped that the buzzing was from a major hangover but his head was clear. Part of him was pissed that his dream had been interrupted but the bigger part of him sprang into fight mode. The razor-sharp tips of his adamantium claws jabbed and pricked at the skin between his knuckles, hopeful that the time for battle was near at hand. Then he heard the banshee wail of the alarm siren and knew that something was serious.  
Logan hit the ground running, charging out onto the corridor and down the stairs. Most of the students were milling around on the staircase, anxiously asking what was happening. Storm and that angel guy were in the middle of sprinting down the hall to the Professor’s office when Logan dismounted the stairs.  
“What’s going on?” he barked as he fell into step beside Storm, her stark white hair fanning about her face.  
“Intruder alert,” she barked out. “Someone’s set off the perimeter alarms. They’re approaching the mansion.”  
“How far?”  
“Don’t know.”  
They burst into the office that Logan had only vacated a few hours ago and found the Professor behind his desk in a robe. It was as if the guy slept behind the damn thing. Jean, Scott and a myriad of other semi-operational X-Men were also waiting for information.  
“Whoever has breached our security isn’t making a secret of it. They’re walking across the grounds.”  
“How many are we looking at?” Scott asked.  
“As far as I can tell there is only one intruder but I can’t figure out their intentions. There is a great deal of power out there that is disturbing my thoughts.”  
Logan had heard all that he was interested in. The school was being invaded by an unknown force with unknown abilities. That gave him carte blanche to do what he did best.  
As usual, Scott was leading the charge with Jean beside him. He was calling out orders like he had any idea what he was doing. Logan’s mission plan was clear and simple; locate the enemy and take them out.  
The night was cool and still when they took up their guard at the front of the building but there was a foreboding energy in the air. The calmness and serenity of the institute had been shattered, its virtue threatened.  
“Jean, where are they coming from?” Scott asked.  
Jean flicked her red hair and focussed forwards, her eyes darting about as she read the energies in the air. Then she pointed straight forward across the lawn. “There.”  
“Is the Professor right? Is there only one?” Storm added, her apprehension clear.  
Jean just nodded.  
“Right. Angel, get up high and see if you can get a visual. Prep for a stealth aerial attack. Storm, we’ll need some cover and Jean, try and lock your powers onto him and give us as much information as possible. Everyone else fan out across this side of the building. Hold this line at all costs. We can’t let him get into the building.”  
It was a tense few moments. Logan could feel the air electrifying as the people readied their powers. There was the initial swoop as Warren spread his angel wings and took off but then even he grew silent. Then, very quietly, footsteps began to appear. The slow, rhythmic thudthudthudthud approached them over the grass. Storm’s fog descended thick and fast, almost obscuring the landscape altogether. It brought a bitter chill to the air that wasn’t helped by Bobby Drake’s ice ability.   
The anticipation was too much for Logan. He was a heartbeat away from breaking team when someone did it for him and it didn’t take a genius to figure out whom. The column of fire was a dead giveaway.  
Pyro began his assault with one fireball and then added another to the mix. He didn’t think about where he was aiming, he just let them loose in the vain hope that one would hit his target. Scott tried to scream orders but the kid wasn’t listening. His teeth were bared against their invisible foe and it seemed that he wanted the same thing as Logan did. The orange glow seemed to make the fog congeal, making it difficult to see anything. Then there was a bolt of light and Pyro’s fire attack stopped. Then the fog cleared. Then everyone turned in surprise to find the kid laid out unconscious on the floor.   
“What the...?”  
Logan’s surprise was cut short when Warren swooped down from above and knocked their mysterious assailant off his feet. When the intruder got up Warren lunged again, this time grabbing the guy by the coat and throwing him twenty feet back the way he had come.  
Logan was convinced that Warren might be able to send the guy packing with very little drama when there was another bolt of light and the guy hit the ground, wings and all.  
Then all hell broke loose.   
The darkness was suddenly lit up as Scott opened fire with his red optic blasts. Storm summoned a lightning cloud and began directing the bolts towards land. Jean used her telekinesis to control rocks, boulders and even a few massive plant pots, throwing them in the general direction of the intruder. All the haphazard attacks were conducted in the hope that at least one would strike their target.  
Then those strange bolts appeared and each attacker dropped to the ground. That was when Logan made his decision.  
Somewhere in the distance he registered a voice behind him but he wasn’t interested in the message. He propelled himself across the lawn, his legs pumping. He could smell the intruder just ahead of him, hiding in the darkness. Ten feet...eight feet...six...four. When he was an arm’s stretch away, Logan released his claws and lunged with his lead arm. Instead of feeling them disappear into human flesh, he felt the resistance of metal on metal and was stunned. Any weapon should have been shredded by that blow. Then the intruder began a very well-trained array of moves that quashed any attempt of his to overwhelm the other. Every one of his blows was parried but whatever weapon his opponent was carrying never went beyond a defence. Logan was fighting to win – to kill – but he was out-skilled by a mile.  
“Logan!”  
Rogue’s scream meant that something of the fight was visible but he was too distracted to realise that she was running towards him. That damn kid was too protective of him. His arms were aching from the continued exertion and his head was spinning from trying to focus on the identity of his opponent. Just when Logan felt like he would be able to see his face, the guy ducked out of sight. It was getting frustrating but every attempt he made to try and end the fight the bloody way was thwarted. He didn’t like the idea that the intruder was a better fighter and owned a better weapon than he did.  
He lunged again with his claws but his blow met that metallic weapon again, his blades locking with his opponent’s. He was spun around and around before his face slammed into the ground, his claws free of whatever hold they’d been trapped in. He rolled onto his back, hands raised in case the intruder tried to attack again, but all he saw was Rogue fly at a girl with long blonde hair.  
The girl was standing exactly where his attacker should have been. Logan’s eyes strayed down to see the weapon that was of equal strength to his adamantium and he didn’t dare believe what he saw. The darkness had to be playing tricks on his eyes.  
The girl had claws just like his, only hers were in her fingers.  
“Rogue, don’t!” he shouted, knowing what the stupid kid was going to try and do. Her hands were bare and as she leapt over him, she went skin-on-skin with the blonde girl.  
Rogue wrapped her hands around the girl’s face and held on tight.   
There was a split second where nothing happened. No mottled skin on either part, no screams of agony and no passing out. The blonde girl’s eyes widened in shock as Rogue’s ability took hold but then Rogue started to convulse. Her body jarred with shocking violence as if she was being electrocuted. She was locked in a death-grip, unable to let go. It didn’t take long before the force of her seizure shook her out of her own grip, flopping to the floor and straining for breath. Logan instantly backed away. He wanted to try and comfort her but with her hands bare and her arms flailing wildly, he couldn’t risk her contacting him. In all likelihood he’d make her a million times worse.  
Instead he looked at the girl with wary eyes as he stayed put, sprawled on the grass like a pussy. Actually, you couldn’t really call her a girl. Logan wouldn’t have placed her as any older than eighteen – twenty at a stretch – but there was something in her face that made him believe her to be older. There was hardness in the way she set her face in a stern pose that aged her at least five years and her eyes held such knowledge and wisdom, she could easily have been Yoda or the Dalai Lama or something. Stood before him was a young woman that had suffered much, toiled long and survived always. Then his eyes danced across her adamantium claws, still visible more out of threat than any obvious attack. Something clicked deep within him, as if the bungee cord tied to his feet throughout his life had finally stopped him falling.   
This was the girl he had dreamed about. This was the family that he had yearned for. They were kindred spirits, bound by the process they had been subjected to. Perhaps this girl was the key to Logan’s amnesia.

   
Ultra was done paying attention to the man lying at her feet. Her fascination with his display of claws had ended once she caught sight of the man in the wheelchair.  
Charles Xavier.  
Even paralysed, there was a presence – an authority – about him that proved his status. Just catching a single glimpse of him convinced her as to why he had so many mutants fighting for his cause. Still, his troops were in desperate need of discipline, particularly regarding conduct in warfare. When it had been so easy for her to deactivate the security measures protecting the perimeter, Ultra knew that there was probably something deeper and more difficult to detect lurking in the darkness, waiting to trip her up. She had felt the circuit as soon as she had tripped it but she was too tired to catch the blast before it activated the alarms. She would just have to deal with whatever interception came her way. Low and behold, the mansion’s first line of defence was also its last; this group of semi-competent mutants with varying skills under varying levels of control. None of whom was a match for her, except the one she was sure was the Wolverine that Stryker had talked about. He was trained to a certain level but it had ended long before hers had so in hand-to-hand combat together, he would always lose.   
Ultra didn’t appreciate being attacked. That was what the group had to work on. Save your energies for the real threat.  
As she took a step towards Xavier, she felt what little strength she had left desert her. She had been running on her reserve stores for three weeks now, barely eating and barely sleeping, choosing to travel at night when she couldn’t be detected. Now she was stood before this group of people, all of whom looking at her with wary eyes because they were smart and cautious. As threatening as they should have appeared to an intruder, Ultra felt completely safe. No one here would hurt her because they were curious. They wanted to know where she had come from and why she had descended on them in the dead of night. They would be even more curious about her in the morning when they realised her potential. But until then, she was confident that nothing would harm her here and the thought made her feel completely exhausted.  
She caught the old man’s eyes as her legs gave out beneath her. There was a warmth and understanding in those eyes that she felt she could trust. Ultra felt a pair of strong hands grab onto her before she hit the floor and she was pulled into a pair of powerful arms.   
A contented sigh escaped her as the world went black.  
   
Rogue stood off to the side of the sick bay, her eyes fixed on the form lying prostrate on the bench. Jean Grey was flitting about the lab with charts and phials, none of which related to her current patient. As concerned as they all were about the woman’s sudden collapse outside, whatever would happen was in almighty hands. The woman just couldn’t be treated.  
Rogue wasn’t sure what had drawn her out of her room but there was an overwhelming force calling to her. She was supposed to be resting, especially after what had happened when she had come into contact with their intruder, but she just couldn’t shut her mind off. So she had very quietly shuffled down the deserted corridors to the sick bay. It went some way to ease her mind, standing by the door watching what was happening but it raised more questions than it answered.  
Rogue remembered that precise moment when she and this stranger had come into direct contact. Something in her had snapped when she saw Logan in danger and the need to act overrode the orders that Scott had issued. Her legs had gained life and as she had sprinted across the manicured lawn, she had stripped off her gloves. Rogue had known exactly what she wanted to do. She channelled enough of her ability to knock out a stampeding herd of wildebeest and reached for the woman’s face. But things hadn’t worked out as she had planned. Instead of dropping like a rock and leaving Rogue with another personality inside her head, there had been an almighty shock that had travelled down Rogue’s arms. It had burned through her entire body like a lightning bolt before concluding at her feet. She had felt the power trap her, snaring her like a powerful magnet. She had wanted to let go but she couldn’t. That was the precise moment she had realised that she was way out of her depth.   
The power that was encased in this woman was uncharted, immeasurable. It had completely overwhelmed Rogue and she remembered desperately wanting to cry out. The pain was indescribable as the various powers had fought for dominance. Passing out had been like someone tripping the safety switch in her brain. Her fuse had completely burned out and down she went. But when she had come to in this very room in which she now stood, the party had well and truly started. The Professor had immediately coined the term ‘self-possessed’. He hadn’t used it in the conventional sense where someone was completely wrapped up in themselves; their own abilities, problems etc. This version of self possession defined Rogue’s condition entirely; during her power transfer, Rogue took on the abilities of others for a short time but with that came certain personality traits too. The problem was that each power seemed to come with its own personality so she had become a creature that was constantly being torn apart and re-shaped in a different form. One power might appear docile and unthreatening, like telepathy, whereas another would be explosive and aggressive, like her control over seismic activity.   
The Professor had been forced to shut Rogue away for fear of everyone’s safety, which had aggravated her condition for a while. Underneath the self possession, Rogue had been very aware of what was happening and had been desperately trying to regain control but the powers were so dominant, so completely beyond her capabilities, that all she could do was lie in wait. After all, the absorption only lasted a short time and it would wear itself out eventually but that had felt like an absolute age. Eventually she had returned to normal and the Professor had banished her to her room to rest out the effects. Now she was here.  
Only about eight abilities had manifested in Rogue’s body after the transfer but she had felt hundreds of fragments floating around inside of her. Starved of their correct body, these fragments hadn’t been able to nurture themselves and join the fray but she knew that they were there. Precisely how many abilities were locked in that woman’s control was unprecedented. That was what the Professor was so concerned about. Still, Rogue felt a strong connection between her and the stranger. It felt like the type of connection that existed between conjoined twins. Neither could function without the other. Rogue was absolutely sure that the blonde mutant could function perfectly well on her own, but Rogue fancied that she, herself, couldn’t function without the woman. Besides the abilities that Rogue had absorbed, she had also felt a taste of her own ability mixed amongst the fragments. If the woman also had some kind of absorption ability, perhaps she had gotten control over it. Perhaps she could help Rogue learn more about her own version of the mutation.  
The door to Rogue’s left suddenly hissed on its hydraulics and the inches thick steel slid aside to reveal Logan looking tense and worried. His hands were jammed into the pockets of his jeans and he puffed on the fat cigar between his lips in a distracted fashion. For once, he completely overlooked Jean’s presence and fixed his gaze on the unconscious woman. After her brief experience inside the woman’s head, Rogue knew exactly why he was here.  
“How’s she doing?” he barked, not noticing Rogue stood beside the door.  
Jean heaved a sigh and rubbed her eyes beneath her spectacles, reaching for a clipboard. “I can’t tell,” she replied. “I’ve tried performing even the most basic tests but it’s like this girl has some kind of default defence mode that prevents anyone interfering with her when she’s in an unconscious state.”  
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Logan chewed the words out around the cigar.  
In lieu of an answer, Jean picked up a stainless steel tray and slammed it down on the girl’s stomach with enough force to break both it and her patient in two. Only when Rogue cried out in surprise did Logan realise that they had a witness.   
It was as if nothing had happened at all. The girl continued sleeping, her form and integrity completely undisturbed by the blow. Not even her steady breathing altered in pitch. The only thing that looked any different was the poor tray, which looked like it had been run over by a GMC truck. The middle was dented and contorted as if it had been wrapped around a bollard.   
“Does that answer your question?” Jean answered abruptly, pushing her glasses back over her eyes. “She may look peaceful but there is something very strong and very impenetrable protecting this girl. It’s like she’s made out of living marble. I tried to take these X-rays earlier and look what came out.”   
She flicked a switch beneath the light box and the X-ray films that were illuminated looked like something had shorted out badly with the lens. The images were completely clouded over but you could clearly make out the outline of a body along the edges.   
“I tried to take some bloods to run through the assay machine but couldn’t get the line through her skin. The needle just broke off as soon as it came into contact.”  
“But how is that possible?” Rogue gasped, inching closer to the light box. “Surely she has no awareness when she’s unconscious?”  
Jean shrugged and put the clipboard away. “The Professor believes that everything is possible with this mutant. About an hour ago he tried to telepathically connect with her to bring her round but he couldn’t get through. There is definitely some kind of field protecting her that nothing can penetrate. Only the absolute highest class of mutant would be able to achieve that level of unconscious power.”  
“What kind of class?” Logan asked.  
“Mutants are graded in terms of their abilities. Most don’t qualify above a Class Four. Some, like Magneto and the Professor, are advanced enough to be qualified as Class Five. Class Six mutants were thought to be impossible but the Professor suspects that this girl could be a Class Seven. She could be a terrific asset to the cause if we can learn more about her.”  
“Or she could become a target,” Rogue thought out loud, attracting both Jean’s and Logan’s attention. “If Magneto and his Brotherhood get wind of the fact that we have even a Class Six in residence, let alone a Class Seven, he could storm the school to try and get hold of her.”  
Jean’s smirk was one of total confidence. “If her powers are even an eighth what we think they may be then Magneto would have one hell of a fight on his hands if he tried to take her away by force. Even if he did manage to seduce her into joining him, it would take her about ten seconds to depose him and assume control herself. Mutants this powerful are unpredictable and not even Magneto could control them, no matter his propaganda.”  
“All this talk about different classes of mutants,” Logan growled. “It’s all a bunch of shit. It’s like being back at school.”  
“Call it what you want Logan, but there has to be a way for us to sum up the abilities of any mutant somehow for classification.”  
He grunted a response and stomped to the back of the room, slumping against the wall a few feet from Rogue.  
“You OK, kid?” he asked without looking at her while Jean went back to her work.  
“Yeah,” Rogue replied, clearing her throat a little. She couldn’t deny that after her initial meeting with Logan, she had been taken by him. That was before he had saved her life, of course. He was rough, rugged and definitely had that whole bad-boy thing down pat. Logan was a far cry from the guys she usually liked but he was way too old for her.  
“You gave me a scare out there.”  
He fixed her with a look as his mouth steamed with smoke. It was a look that he used on her often.  
“Sorry,” she said with a shrug. “I just thought she was going to hurt you.”  
“It’s not like I was totally helpless out there,” he said with a slight sideways smirk. She knew that he was goading her but the sly wink explained that he was grateful for her intervention out there, whether it was needed or not.   
“Fair point, but neither was she.”  
A little uncomfortable, Rogue turned her gaze back to the mutant lying on the table. The thought of both her and Logan being science experiments flashed through her mind, making her shiver. Knowing that someone was evil enough to torture two people made her feel sick to the stomach. Sometimes people would do anything for power.  
Rogue felt the connection between her and the stranger grow in intensity, pulsing with an invisible energy that almost felt like compulsion or hypnosis.   
“What was it like inside her head?” Logan asked, his voice swimming through the haze in her brain.  
“What do you mean?”  
“You heard. What was it like with that much power?”  
She paused for a moment, trying to remember those foggy few moments before the powers had taken her over, then she shrugged. “I don’t know. I wasn’t really in her mind for that long.”  
“You displayed quite an amount of power, kid. I heard Scott whining about having to rebuild the whole place if you managed to get loose.”  
“Imagine how it felt in my head,” Rogue said in a snappier voice than she intended. It felt like she was being interrogated, as if her attempts to save Logan’s life were somehow a cardinal sin that made her deserving of punishment. “All I remember when I touched her face was this wave come over me and all this power poured down the link. I overloaded. I couldn’t control them or even hear my own personality. All there was was the power. Do you have any idea how that feels?”  
Logan watched her carefully for a moment. He plucked the cigar from his lips and was about to answer when the hydraulic doors slid open again and Professor Xavier wheeled himself inside. The whir of the motors and the slight squeal of his tyres on the tiles pierced the sudden silence as he made his way over to the table.  
“Has there been any change?” His deep, English tone resonated through the laboratory, snapping Jean Grey to attention.  
“No. I can’t understand why this coma has persisted and I can’t test her to get a biological reason.”  
“The field protecting her mind has intensified since I attempted to contact her,” Charles said, casting his hand three inches over her face as if testing the waters. “Externally she may be exhibiting all the signs of a coma but internally she is very much aware of what is going on.”  
“Is she going to be alright?” Logan asked, stepping into the room while Rogue stayed behind, arms folded across her chest.  
“I can’t be sure,” Charles answered with a regretful sigh. “She wasn’t physically wounded during her encounter outside so all I can assume is that she is exhausted and needs time to rest.”  
“Surely you can get through to her somehow?”  
The Professor shook his head very definitely. “I’m sorry Logan but I can’t. The energy that is protecting her body is also protecting her mind. When I tried to connect with her, all I could see was stairs and doors all leading off in different directions. Orientation is meaningless in there; you could walk through a door and find yourself suddenly standing on the ceiling surrounded by more doors, and if you walk up a flight of stairs, you’ll be walking down them on the opposite side. It is a place of total madness. If I’d tried to probe any deeper I could have lost myself inside of her mind forever with no hope of return. That kind of elaborate defence mechanism comes from someone that has had to train themselves very hard to protect their innermost world. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that it was caused by her encounter with William Stryker.”  
Logan swallowed hard and massaged his knuckles. “So what can we do?”  
“We just have to wait until she finds her way back.”  
“And if she never does?”  
Charles smiled. “A mutant with as much power as I suspect she has wouldn’t persist in a coma for very long.”  
Rogue watched as Logan looked the girl over very carefully, his eyes sweeping up and down her body as he took in every contour and every curve of her form. She could see the questions shining in his eyes, especially as he slowly reached out his right hand and traced his fingers across hers. Then he clasped her hand tightly, his thumb working into her palm as if he was tracking the path of the claws that were currently invisible.   
Rogue saw the mixture of pain and relief in his face and knew what he was thinking. It was exactly the conversation that she had shared with him on many occasions. Logan wanted and needed someone to fill in the gaps in his memory. It wasn’t enough for the Professor to tease the answers to the front of his consciousness anymore. He needed total, unreserved answers. This girl was a kindred spirit. A sister.  
She sensed the change in the girl before those closed eyes flicked open. Rogue was still nervy and hypersensitive after her encounter with a fraction of the girl’s power, but her senses were so attuned that she could sense the sudden shift in the protective grid that Jean and the Professor had monitored. Holes appeared in it, great fissures that Rogue could almost visualise as if the girl was contained in Snow White’s glass coffin. Logan sensed the defences as they disappeared altogether and called for the Professor and Jean just as the girl’s eyes opened.  
   
For the first time in her life, Ultra had known peace. To close one’s eyes against a cruel and unjust world was to shut out all the pain so that you could truly focus on yourself. Each time you blink it gives you a microsecond with which to breathe unhindered. Sometimes you close your eyes against the world by choice and sometimes the choice is denied. Chosen or not, to leave that peace behind is a chore – a curse.  
Ultra felt the world calling to her through her slumber. The exhaustion of living on the run had finally caught up with her but the world wouldn’t be left unattended. She could hear voices swimming all around her but their words were distorted so that she couldn’t make them out. Sounds also availed her but once again she couldn’t discern them. Then she had felt a presence unlike any other. It went far beyond what was physical but it was powerful. It tried to convince her to let it in but there was no way she was going to allow that. If that presence was a friend then it would understand her reasons, and if it was a foe then she would kill it later. Then something physical had come into contact with her and that was what brought her back. There was something in that touch that she couldn’t describe. A brother?  
It took Ultra’s eyes a second to adjust to the sharp white light that seemed to come from all around her. When her focus had returned the first thing she saw was the gunmetal grey ceiling and walls, the piercing halogen tile lights with their motion sensors, and a sterile chrome tray with various gleaming implements.  
She jolted upright in a panic, her heart thundering in her ears. Her claws snapped out of their own accord, shredding the thin shift blanket that covered her as she fought to get free. Then she was on her feet, bare soles slopping clumsily against the cold linoleum. She turned to face the table she had lain on and came face-to-face with her captors.  
“Where am I?” she cried, hands and claws held up in a defensive stance. The red-haired woman in the white lab coat took a step towards her but she flicked a clawed finger in her direction, gesturing for her to come no further. “Don’t get any closer.”  
Two people with varying levels of psychic abilities.  
The girl with that unusual contact issue.  
The Wolverine with claws like hers.  
Ultra’s basic defence was to classify her captors’ mutations and their level of competence first. She knew that they were no match for her, not even the old man who was highly evolved.   
The Wolverine moved towards her first but that didn’t surprise her. He was well versed in the language of adamantium claws so they posed no threat to him. His muscles undulated as he moved with all the stealth of a panther coiled to pounce. His palms were up in surrender, his eyes cool and fixed unblinkingly on hers.   
As he neared, Ultra’s eyes flicked cautiously to the man in the wheelchair. Charles. She knew from the look on his face and the way his abilities scored on her mental grid that he had been the one who had tried to access her head while she had been out. The fact that he hadn’t pushed his way in was a credit to his character, but the fact that he had tried to tap into her at all wasn’t a good sign. But that smile told her that she was safe. The initial fear at seeing the cold, clinical ceiling and walls began to ebb away. For a split second, Ultra had thought that she was back at Alkalai Lake. There had been the very real possibility that Stryker and his team of soldiers had cornered her, overpowered her while she had slept and had forced her back ‘home’. But the laboratory around her wasn’t in the dark, mouldy wings of the dam and there wasn’t a torture tank filled with water right in the middle. There certainly wasn’t the stink of boiling metal either. This place was just a medical facility where people who cared about one another tended their wounded and sick.  
Ultra felt the early pangs of a headache strike her left temple. There was so much to take in. So many questions that needed to be answered.   
“Don’t be afraid,” Charles said, the familiarity of his English accent warming her soul. “No one here is going to hurt you. You’re safe now.”  
“Then why was I attacked?” she snapped. As friendly as his demeanour was, Ultra couldn’t ignore what had happened outside. Granted, she had accessed their facility unannounced and without an invitation, but had that given the mutants inside a reason to attack her?  
“You broke into our facility and my students responded, but the attack on you was unintentional.”  
“Someone broke team?”  
“Yes, that’s right,” Charles answered with a smile.  
“Then they require proper training,” she said.  
“I have a feeling that you might be able to help in that department.”  
Ultra felt a snort of derision escape her and would have regretted it had it had any effect on the old man at all. In fact, it actually seemed to amuse him. “I’m no authority.”  
“What is your name?”  
“Ultra.”  
Charles dropped his chin into a nod of respect. “I am...”  
“Charles Xavier. Wolverine. Rogue. Jean Grey.”  
The three other mutants all looked to the old man in surprise but he didn’t seem fazed at all. It was as if he knew everything about her already, which, given his telepathic abilities, would have been very plausible had she have thought for a second that he could get through her mental defences.  
“It is a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “I have arranged for a room to be made ready for you if you would care to see it?”  
Very slowly, Ultra retracted her claws back into the beds in her fingers. Absent-mindedly she scratched at a point beneath her left eye, watching Charles Xavier very carefully. If the old man had an ulterior motive, she didn’t find it.  
“A room?” she asked with a suspicious half-frown.  
“Yes,” he replied with that same fatherly smile. “And food and fresh clothing if you’d like.”  
She glanced down at the paper hospital gown that had replaced her torn, soiled clothes and then looked back at him again. People underestimated how cold you could get without underwear, even in a mansion with an advanced climate control system. She looked from Jean, to Rogue, to Wolverine and then back to the Professor before her head issued a cautious little nod.  
“Wonderful. Follow me, my dear.”  
With that, he flicked the controls of his electric wheelchair and began to lead the way out of the lab. The corridor beyond was the same sterile metal. It was a far cry from the mildew-y concrete of Stryker’s dominion but the sight of it still set her teeth on edge. She felt like this was the true purpose of the mansion, concealed beneath the grand respectability above ground. Was this place a haven, a safe house where mutants could live and be, or was it a training ground where an ill-conceived war would be waged against the blissfully ignorant Ordinaries? After her experiences with training and war strategies, Ultra hoped against hope that the estate’s purpose was the former.  
A lift transported them to the upper levels. Ultra hadn’t been aware that the other three mutants were following until they stepped into the lift behind her. Their suspicions, insecurities and curiosity all pressed on her, tempting her to delve into their minds for the fuller story but she resisted. They were well within their right to exercise caution in front of her. It proved that they were sensible.  
The door slid open to reveal the public face of the vast house. Gone were the sterile corridors and bright lighting and in its place were dark wood panelling, laminated floors and gentle wall lights that cast a homely glow about the place. Doors and doors led off from the passages, some leading into large classrooms with their chairs and desks all lined uniformly before the blackboards, while others opened onto common rooms of varying function and decoration. Some held pool tables and other amusements, while others simply contained televisions, stereo systems and big, comfortable-looking sofas. None of them appealed to Ultra in the slightest but as their procession continued, she eventually glanced into a room that held a great deal of appeal.  
The oak double doors were flung open against the doorframe, cases and cases of books revealed for all to see. Most of them looked old with their leather binding and fancy gold gilding while others were more modern paperbacks. The older books were stacked neatly side-by-side and were coated in varying layers of dust. They were sad and lonely, respected far too much to be read regularly. You could tell the popular books from the way they were arranged, some abandoned on the plump sofas and armchairs or stuffed back on their shelves either on their bellies or spine-to-spine. It all combined to create a homely, welcoming feeling that Ultra had always loved about libraries. It even had that smell of paper and glue. She could taste the oniony scent of the rich leather. Her memories cast her back to the bygone time when she had been a child and had lived like Matilda, consuming every book she could get her hands on. The library had been her only friend back then, even more so when her abilities had manifested. She had learned so much about being a mutant in those walls, as well as finding comfort and love.  
“We are very proud of our library’s collection.”  
Ultra whipped around to look at Charles, not realising that she had inched her way through the doors. She cleared her throat and scrubbed a hand through her mussed hair. “It is definitely impressive,” she mumbled.  
“Do you like to read?”  
She nodded in reply and then jerked a hand in a clumsy gesture for them to continue. She didn’t want to leave the safe confines of the library but it was a little early for the strange mutants around her to learn so much about her likes and dislikes. After all, they hadn’t proven that they could be trusted yet.  
The corridors all seemed to go on forever up here. Ultra fancied that the downstairs ones had a similar feel, but the wood panelling and dark floors seemed to lead them on a never-ending path. Every door, every twist, every turn and every window looked the same; the only thing that changed was the vista visible through the leaded glass. Hell, even the framed artwork and marble statues all started to look alike. Jean Grey had splintered off from their little group and had disappeared down another labyrinthine corridor. Ultra had watched her go, slowing her step. There was something strangely hostile in that woman’s aura that Ultra was suspicious of. After all, what had she got to worry about just because a newcomer had arrived?  
Jean seemed unusually focused on the hallway ahead of her as Ultra watched, as if she knew that she was under scrutiny. Ultra watched her until she was out of sight and resolved to keep a close eye on that particular mutant. There was definitely something amiss that she couldn’t put her finger on.  
“This will be your room, my dear.”  
Hearing Charles’ voice startled Ultra out of her vigil and she turned to see that he had stopped only a few doors ahead of the corridor that Jean had traversed. This particular door was one of many along the passage and looked identical to its fellows. But when the door opened, her breath caught in her throat. The grandeur of the rest of the house hadn’t moved her; her parents had favoured tours around stately homes when she was a child so the sight of oak panelling, sweeping staircases and ornate wood carvings didn’t send her into a catatonic state, but seeing that door open onto such opulence and knowing that it was hers for the time being made her realise just how long it had been since she’d known any kind of comfort.  
The decoration wasn’t anything spectacular; the magnolia wallpaper was inlaid with some kind of embossed shimmer that highlighted a scrolling, damask pattern. The light danced off the striation, making it seem as though the walls were in a constant state of flux. Ultra was almost scared of stepping off the cool wood of the corridor because she had forgotten what carpet felt like when it settled between your toes. The fittings were period enough to remain connected to the rest of the house without devaluing it and the heavy black-out drapes that cascaded either side of the huge window were a deep ruby red to match the carpet. The view beyond the leaded windows was the best one that Ultra had seen so far, stretching far across the primped lawns, past a few perfect looking hedgerows and out towards the woodland. As much as she enjoyed the seclusion of the woods, Ultra felt a shiver work its way down her spine. Never again would she be able to enjoy walking amongst the tree trunks. She would always be programmed to escape and evade exercises.  
She could feel the remaining three mutants watching her, probably wondering why she was so speechless, but they didn’t understand. Well, her clawed friend probably did but the other two had no idea what it was like to be treated like a prisoner. With an estate such as this, the old man probably hadn’t had to worry about a great deal in his life and the girl was too young to know anything. But to Ultra, this room meant more than any amount of money.   
“Are you sure you want to let me loose in here?” she asked, the hint of sarcasm a hollow attempt to mask her emotions.  
Charles smiled. “Where else would you have me house you?” he asked.  
“This is too pretty for the likes of me.”  
“Then I get the feeling that you have been woefully deprived. This is the kind of comfort I like to lavish on all who seek sanctuary.”  
Rogue’s smile and gentle nodding confirmed the old man’s assumption.  
Ultra wanted to make some glib remark about him having more money than sense but chastised herself for sounding ungrateful. Absent-mindedly, she trailed her fingers across the satin eiderdown with its elegant damask pattern that matched the wallpaper almost perfectly. Then she pushed her palm into the soft down and felt the bedding give beneath the pressure. She bit down on her bottom lip and swallowed hard. A part of her was scared of getting any closer because it would just compound all that she had been through with Stryker. Her memory took her back to that cold, damp cell and that slab that she had laid on. Even though she had been free of Alkalai Lake for a few weeks, Ultra had never slept in a bed. Of course, those well-worn, soiled mattresses in the motels she had passed through bore no comparison to what she stood before right now but a bed was a bed. She had slept on the floor. She had never felt safe in those motels, conscious always of the fact that Stryker’s team of jarheads could have blown down the door and dragged her back. She had always slept on the floor at the side of the bed that shielded her from view of the door and the window. At least if someone had burst inside, she would have had enough time to come too and phase through the floor to safety. Now that she felt marginally safe in this school, surrounded by mutants and advanced security systems, Ultra still couldn’t quite believe that she would be able to let her old habits die. She wanted to, though.  
“You are welcome to this room for as long as you need,” Charles said. “There is no time limit to our hospitality. Dinner is served promptly at six o’ clock so be in the dining room if you’re ready to eat. If not, then you are free to use the kitchens to prepare anything you’d like later. Breakfast is between six-thirty and eight and classes begin at nine o’ clock so the house will be quiet from then on if you wish to explore on your own. Please don’t be offended when I tell you that the ground levels are out of bounds for the moment but there isn’t anything you will need down there. Apart from that, you have the freedom to move about as you wish.”  
“You certainly seem to like your timetables and your structure,” Ultra chided, secretly glad of it. You couldn’t go from being a fully trained soldier with uniformity in one moment to a free-as-a-bird civilian the next.  
“Our primary function is a school so structure is imperative,” he replied with that same small smile in place. It seemed that nothing she could possibly try to tease him with would get a rise out of him. He just wore that same expression of calm amusement. “Naturally, I wouldn’t dream of inflicting those classes on you unless you were willing.”  
“It’s hard to fill a cup which is already full,” Ultra replied with her own little smirk. Charles Xavier simply regarded her for a second and then nodded. It was as if he already knew everything about her but that was impossible.   
“If you need anything at all, my office is just south of the main living room,” Charles said, as if she had any way of finding it. Ultra knew that she could just by sniffing the place out. “Hopefully we will all see you at dinner but if we don’t, have a good night’s rest my dear.”  
With that, Charles manoeuvred his wheelchair out of the room without looking back. Rogue smiled and permitted her a girlish little wave before heading out while Wolverine took a more brazen approach. He fixed her with a deeply scrutinising look, swept his eyes up and down her body before nodding tersely.   
“A pleasure to meet you Wolverine,” Ultra said with a polite bob of her head.  
His posture suddenly went rigid as if he was surprised that she knew anything about him but then he turned sharply and left. Their sudden departure made the room seem oddly empty despite the forests of wooden furniture around her. She glanced around the room carefully, checking each crevice and every nook before she settled herself on the floor in between the desk and the corner of the room where the drapes hung down to the carpet. She was out of sight of the window but had a defensive vantage point of the door. Only then did she feel like the air was thin enough for her to breathe again. Ultra took deep lungfuls and tuned her ears into the hubbub medley throughout the mansion, eliminating all possibilities for a surprise attack.  
Yes, old habits really did die hard.  
   
If there was one thing that Logan was sure of, it was that he absolutely, unequivocally hated libraries. So how the hell had he found himself in this one?  
Propped against the wall with his arms across his chest, he gazed out of the window. He hadn’t paid much attention to the lush green estate before but it was amazing how an intruder could change your outlook. He inhaled hard against the thick drape that hung between him and the window, the slightly musty scent of dust and age filling his nostrils. He’d be lying if he said that he wasn’t here in the hope of bumping into her.  
After they’d left her room, Logan had followed the Professor all the way to his office, interrogating him about what his next move was going to be. The answer had been infuriatingly vague;  
“I’m not going to push her Logan. She has clearly been through an ordeal and needs to acclimatise herself to life here before she feels secure enough to trust us.”  
Logan rolled his eyes at a bird as it swooped past the window. The Professor didn’t understand how it felt to be a walking void with no memory of the past. He didn’t understand what it was like to have the scars from being someone else’s experiment but without knowing precisely why. Finally Logan had hope for an answer to all his questions and she walked into the room behind him.  
Slowly, silently, he turned his head towards the door, knowing that he was virtually invisible. The glow from the window would distract the eyes from anything in its vicinity and the dark clothes he was wearing camouflaged him against the heavy drape. Ultra, however, was blissfully visible and was the vision of comfort. She had changed out of the hospital gown into what must have been borrowed clothes considering all of hers were currently being cleaned and mended by the Professor’s staff. Her hair was tied in a loose pony that was pulled across her right shoulder, slightly obscuring the geometric print on the baggy off-the-shoulder lounge shirt. The grey strap of a cami vest peeked above the slightly exposed left shoulder, giving a promise of what lay beneath. Her athletic legs were encased in a pair of basic black leggings, giving Logan’s roving eye a pleasing show as she moved. Her feet were bare and slopped over the waxed wood. In her hand was a bottle of Bud, still corked.  
Ultra didn’t see him. She strode into the library, breathing deep so that the overpowering scent of old leather and dust filled her lungs. Exactly how she could get pleasure from a place like this, Logan would never understand but he knew that he’d love to hear her try and explain it to him. There was so much he wanted to ask her but when he tried to open his mouth, the words just died on his lips.  
Lost in contemplation, she paused in front of one of the giant bookcases, her eyes tracking far above as she tried to choose from the Professor’s vast collection of literature and reference. Her head tilted back so far that Logan could see the pale flesh of her forehead and the tiny tip of her nose. Suddenly he was consumed with the urge to twist his hands into that long blonde hair and pull her round to face him as he forced a kiss to her lips. Then he’d push her into the bookcase so hard that she would feel the shelves biting into her back as he ground his hips into her. Then he’d release his grip just enough so that she could gain some ground on him, shoving him into the sofa where she’d straddle him hard and suck the breath right out of his mouth.  
He issued a gasp so loud that he was sure she would hear him. Where the hell had those thoughts come from? He felt so confused. When Ultra had been lying prostrate in the sick bay, completely impenetrable to all medical and psychic intervention, he had felt a connection build between him and her but he had only considered her a sister. Now he was fantasising about screwing her hard in the library? Logan tried not to think about how twisted it all seemed but couldn’t get the thought out of his head. His body was certainly pleased with the shift in perception. A strange vibration travelled from his brain stem all the way down his spine to his legs. His fingers itched, eager to put thought into action. He felt like a bitch in heat and that wasn’t helped by what was happening below the waist.  
“I owe you a beer.”  
The sound of her voice suddenly pierced the silence like a sniper’s bullet, completely unexpected. When she hadn’t responded to his gasp, Logan thought that his status as Peeping Tom was safe. Then Ultra turned her head and looked directly at him with a playful smirk on her face. The cap fell off the neck of the bottle of its own volition and she took a great gulp. Logan wished that he could be that bottle and feel those lips – that tongue.  
“The clothes are from Rogue. Not really my thing.”  
He cleared his throat awkwardly, shifting his position to try and look more casual than he felt. “They suit you.” A black bin liner would suit you.  
Ultra gave a little shrug, as if her shoulder suddenly wanted to kiss her, and then turned back to the shelves. Her left hand secured the bottle, the fingers tapping the glass gently, but the fingers of her right pulsed, clenching and unclenching. Logan frowned, remembering her adamantium claws. He wondered if she was plagued with the same burning ache from the beds as he was sometimes.   
She reached for a book and pulled it free. He couldn’t tell what it was because it was in that same generic brown leather with the poxy gold stuff and the tiny lettering. She smiled at the cover like it was a favourite, though, and he resolved to find out which one it was. Then she walked over to the sofa nearest him and sat down, feet up on the opposite side as if he wasn’t there at all. She cracked the spine, took another sip of beer and began to turn pages.  
Logan just stood there, hypnotised by fascination.  
“I feel like you have a great deal of questions for me, Wolverine,” Ultra said, those deep, earthly tones swimming towards him. “If not, I could easily take this book to my room.”  
Of all the things she could call him, Logan really didn’t like Ultra calling him by his designated name.  
“Did you know I was here?” He didn’t mean right here in the room either. It was a stupid, selfish question to lead off with but he got the feeling that whomever she had escaped from wouldn’t stop until they found her again and that could put both of them at risk.  
Those emerald eyes lifted from the middle page and fixed on him. “What a strange question,” she thought aloud. “I was expecting ‘what’s your real name’ or ‘where did you come from’. But I’ll answer your question; no, I had no idea that you were here.”  
“So why are you here?”  
Ultra didn’t seem to mind his hostility. “I have no home. I had friends but they have since moved on and I don’t know where to. Someone seemed obsessed with this place and I wanted to find out why.”  
“Who?”  
“I’m sure we don’t know each other well enough for that,” she replied with a smirk and dropped her eyes back to her book.  
Logan took a step out of his hiding place, craning his neck to try and see what was so special about a book that she had started in the exact middle. “What are you reading?”  
By way of an answer, she lifted the book so he could read the cover. It was quite ironic the fact that she was reading Pride and Prejudice.  
“Did you lose your copy?”  
Her head snapped up at that one. “My copy?”  
Logan waved a finger. “You’ve started it in the middle.”  
Her chest heaved as a sigh escaped her. “No. I started this when I was eleven and never got the chance to finish it.”  
“You remember where you were up to after that long?” It wasn’t that she was particularly ancient, but at least ten years had to have passed since then.  
“I have a very good memory,” she said, the words hanging in the air meaningfully as if she had chosen them precisely for his benefit. It was as if she was goading him, daring him to ask her what she knew he must want to know.  
“That’s what I’m counting on.” He figured he’d bite and see if she would give something up. Then his body suffered another wave that nearly knocked him off his feet and realised that he wasn’t really bothered about her past right now. Damn, he hoped that she felt the same way but she was as tough to read as a ten-foot barbed wire fence.  
“I feel a bonding moment coming on but I’m not really very good at that stuff,” Ultra said, swigging the beer and then holding the bottle out to him. Logan practically snatched it and took a great guzzle in the hope that the alcohol would cool his body down a little. At least he could legitimately blame lowered inhibitions for how he felt right now.  
“Me neither.”  
She leaned to the side and placed the book open, spine-down on the nearby coffee table. Her fingers traced the wood as if she hadn’t felt anything like it in years and he remembered that wonder that he had witnessed when she had seen her room. “I know what you want to ask,” Ultra said, choosing her words carefully. “I know that you need answers, but I can’t give them. You need to learn things for yourself. My experience and my account won’t be yours and to hear mine would just clog your attempts further.”  
“Do you know what it’s like to live every day not knowing the truth?” he asked, perching on the arm of the sofa.  
“And do you know what it’s like to live every day knowing the truth?” she replied. “Revel in the freedom of ignorance, Wolverine because when the veil is lifted there will be no going back. I would love to be in your position, but I’m not.”  
“Can I at least see them on friendly terms?” Logan asked, nodding at her hands.  
Ultra smiled but he could see the steel rise in her eyes as her guard went up and God, wasn’t that sexy?   
The sound of sliced flesh was as familiar to him as his reflection in the mirror. The skin on her slender fingers parted to let the blades through. They locked into place, all ten of them. Her eyes looked everywhere but at him as if she was embarrassed. Then he released his feeble six blades. The metal was thicker than hers but he fancied that she could do a hell of a lot more damage than he could. Then he did something that he never thought he would; Logan stretched towards her with his claws. He felt like Casper trying to make contact with Kat, or Hiccup trying to bond with Toothless. Or a zebra trying to cuddle a lioness.  
Ultra frowned as she wondered for a second what he was doing, then she shuffled forward in her seat, sliding her claws between his as if they were holding hands. Her palm cupped his fist and he felt the metal brush his knuckles. The grizzly sound of metal skimming metal brought his eyes to hers.  
In that one moment, both of them felt the bond. They could see it in the other’s eyes. They were the only two in the world that had gone through the same process, both thinking that they were the only one. They didn’t have to feel alone anymore because they weren’t, plain and simple. Logan felt his entire world shift when their claws contacted.   
He knew that what he was about to do was the most insane thing he had, and probably would ever do, but when he saw that spark rise in her eyes he couldn’t help himself. Logan reached for her and pulled her towards him, locking their heads together in the most passionate, desperate kiss he had ever experienced. It wasn’t the fact that he wanted to be with this woman right now, he had to. There was something written into the very chemistry of his body that said he needed a pair. Even if this didn’t continue beyond right here, right now, it didn’t matter. All he could think about was having her. Tomorrow would wait.  
If he hadn’t made the first move then Ultra certainly would have. All she had been able to think about all afternoon was him. Those strong, steely eyes. That firm jaw. The defined muscles. That long torso that was so inviting. She knew that it was stupid of her to allow this to happen but there was something in her body that said it had to happen. All reason just went out the window as he crammed his lips onto hers. There was something – whether it was mystical or metaphysical – that connected them and tonight they were going to find out that it wasn’t romantic. She knew that was the unfortunate result, but she was intent on having one hell of a ride there.  
He was so different to Low. Low was gentle and gentlemanly whereas Wolverine was like a rabid animal. He knew what he wanted and he was going to take it before anything got in the way. Ultra liked that. Low had pissed and pratted around for so long that they had only had that one night on the rooftop when they could have had so many more. Wolverine was different. He wasn’t willing to wait.  
As he kissed the hell out of her lips, his tongue tangling with hers so ferociously that she could hardly breathe, Ultra pulled him on top of her, lying them both horizontally so that they were more accessible. His hands instantly started roving about her body, his palm massaging its way up the two tops she wore to settle on her belly. His thumb kneaded the skin just above her hip while his other hand stayed locked with hers, both their claw sets still exposed. She took the opportunity to cast her mind out before it became too muddled, slamming and locking the door with her telekinesis. He sensed the disturbance but didn’t stop his actions.  
As they lay together, his weight crushing her into the sofa, Ultra worked her free hand down his back and around to the front of his jeans, popping the button and fly with ease. She could have done that mentally but she wanted to feel every part of this. He was hard and huge, exploding to freedom. Man, he was scorching hot, the heat from his body radiating into her. It was like they were on fire and he was the match. Then he repaid her action in kind, tearing the crotch of her leggings with a slightly exposed claw. The sudden rush made her gasp into his mouth a split second before he gave her reason to. Then he was right there, filling her up with his size. It was blissful.   
He stopped kissing her long enough to see the ecstasy on her face but she couldn’t see him. Ultra squeezed her eyes shut as his hips began to settle into that gentle thrusting motion. God, he was delicious in every way. It took her all her effort not to tear his back to shreds with her nails. She raked him with every movement, hissing between her teeth as he stretched her. The climax that suddenly escaped her betrayed how long it had been since she had been with Low.  
Her lover growled with pleasure at the fact that he had driven her to the edge first but his jump wasn’t far behind hers. Suddenly his bucking stilled and his entire body went rigid. Ultra opened her eyes and saw him suspended above her by the strength in his arms, his face frozen in an expression of pure pleasure. His mouth was open as a soundless gasp escaped him and she could feel him pulsing inside her. The sight of him so feral but so beautiful made her join him too.  
They stayed bonded together for a long time, pausing only to allow each other their release. It went on for an age before their bodies seemed to fall into synchronicity. Then, all too suddenly, it was over. Wolverine’s strength completely depleted and he collapsed on her, his weight crushing. Their sweat and their heavy breathing mingled as they just lay together for a few moments, slowly allowing normality to return. It was a peaceful lull, one that went undisturbed. After so long in Stryker’s facility, Ultra was glad of the opportunity to enjoy the simple, physical pleasures of life. It certainly beat the time that soldier had tried to force himself on her and had received a crushed skull for his troubles.  
“I don’t suppose you’d be open to trading answers for round two?” Wolverine asked with a throaty chuckle as he lifted his head to look at her.  
Ultra couldn’t help smiling at him. She reached up and ran a hand through his hair and then down his face. “Nice try, brother.”  
His face brightened momentarily at the word and he shuffled off, arranging himself into a more presentable state. He pushed himself to the far side of the sofa, settling himself right in the corner with his arms and head thrown back in bliss. He looked completely relaxed. All that weirdness had gone, which was strange in itself. Usually sex amped up the awkwardness because, after all, seeing one another either naked or in the throes of pleasure wasn’t the most attractive prospect. But this was different; it was as if the need for sex had caused the awkwardness and now that they had indulged for a while, they could move on to something else. They had resolved the question about whether there was anything romantic on the cards for them with a resounding ‘no’ so now it was time to define their relationship based on other parameters.   
Unconsciously, Ultra mirrored Wolverine’s pose, covering her lap with a pillow to hide her slashed leggings.  
“So, what now?” she asked.  
He shrugged. “Damned if I know, girl.”

Ultra could sense danger directly ahead of her. She could taste it in the air as she whetted her lips. She could feel the thrill that pulsed through her veins. The ground beneath her feet was loose and saturated with gravel and rubble. It was difficult to hide her movements and she could feel electromagnetic surges tickling the air around her. It was trying to find her.  
Ducking down low to the ground, Ultra peered under the crippled truck that shielded her from view. She moved her head this way and that to look through the mangled underbelly, around the axel and passed the shredded tyres. It was standing still, six hundred metres away. Its large searchlight eyes flashed red then amber and then back to red again as it cast its field out. Its head never turned, but then robots were omnipotent like that.   
She could sense its focus getting closer and closer to her hiding place. Running her hand in a cyclical fashion on the metal, she tapped into the magnetic fields that held the molecules together and excited them, making them vibrate. The sound they gave off was like a very deep hum, far too deep for ordinary ears to detect, but it was just enough to distract the Sentinel’s location grid just before it locked on to her position. But it didn’t solve the problem of how she was going to defeat it.  
Ultra had tried shape-shifting into smaller and smaller organisms to try and evade detection but the Sentinel was a sophisticated piece of technology. Not even the form of a common house cat could slip past. She had tried going smaller and smaller, right down to shifting into a fruit fly but then she was greeted with the problem of accelerated aging. She could have altered the form to negate those effects but she could have aged fifty years by the time she would have finished so she gave it up as a bad job. Mice couldn’t move fast enough to avoid that laser glare either.  
From under the truck, Ultra could see that there was another overturned vehicle two hundred metres west of her position and then she could seek cover behind that intersection of wall that was still standing. If she could reach that then she would be within fifty metres of the Sentinel and would have some chance of dropping it.  
Summoning a thunder cloud overhead, Ultra directed a rapid-fire stream of lightning at the Sentinel and then darted out from her hiding place. Pounding across the gravel, she heard the sharp whistling of missiles whizzing past her ears. Then the truck she had used for cover exploded, displacing the air and flinging her head-over-heels into a pile of rubble. It took her a second or two to repair her broken spine before she vaulted over the rubble and skidded through shattered glass to safety behind the overturned SUV.  
Then the Sentinel began to move. The whir and hiss of its hydraulic limbs followed by the heavy landing of its metal feet charted its course through the debris. It was a slow, painstaking movement, all the while its scanners searching for her heat signature. It took four steps forwards, clearing two hundred metres. Just looking upwards, Ultra could see the red glow from its searchlights grow in intensity as it drew nearer. Then she got an idea.  
A half-full can of petrol was in the SUV; she could smell the bitter tang of it in the air. Exciting her own molecules so that she could pass through the metal, Ultra reached right through the base of the vehicle and grabbed the canister, pulling it out. One of her mutations allowed her to turn any banal object into a bomb by mere touch. She set the timer and hurled the canister directly to her left where it hit some metal drums. Then she set the timer on the SUV. The Sentinel sensed the disturbance, registering the exponentially increasing temperature of the two objects right in front of it. It was confused. It didn’t know which to deal with first.  
While it was distracted, Ultra tapped into the seismic energy in the ground and triggered an earthquake of sorts. The earth trembled, growing in intensity. She focussed the energy on a single spot, causing a fissure that grew upwards in a similar way to how a mountain is created over thousands of years. The earth contorted as the column grew and Ultra swung herself into position right on the top. Her bombs detonated, further masking her approach. A telekinetic force field protected her from the flames and smoke but the Sentinel was close enough so that the explosions damaged its legs.   
She channelled the energy until she was eye-to-eye with the confused Sentinel. With a slice, she released her adamantium claws and severed its head, riding it back down to earth. She increased her molecular density to such a weight that the impact of the ground coupled with her landing right on top of it crushed the head right in the centre. The body sputtered and fizzed before starting to collapse. Its bulbous backside came on a collision course with her. Ultra raised a hand, creating a self-made magnetic field around the crippled body and arranged it into a sitting position on the ground. It was so surreal to see a robot sitting comfortably without its head.  
Exercise complete.  
You are victorious.  
The Danger Room computers terminated the program and the chaos faded from view, leaving behind a gunmetal grey, barren arena with nothing but walls and floors. Ultra turned towards the door and glanced up at the control room where her peanut gallery was waiting.  
“What was my time?” she asked in a normal voice, knowing that the room was heavily microphoned and they could hear every word.  
“Seven minutes, forty two seconds,” Charles Xavier said with a smile in his voice.  
“That’s a personal best,” she muttered and flew up to the gallery, phasing through the thick Plexiglas.   
There was quite a peanut gallery in the control room; all manner of X-kids were gathered behind the Professor with notebooks open and pens poised. They were all of varying ages, some in their early teens and others that looked well into their twenties. Ultra didn’t know a single one of them by name and she wasn’t going to make the effort either. She wasn’t in the slightest interested in the academic side of the institute.  
She had been a resident for little over a month. The first few days had been a period of adjustment and then Xavier had started to quiz her about first her abilities and then her training. Ultra had answered all his questions with guarded words and then when words weren’t enough, he had wanted demonstrations. Now she was something of a performing monkey, dragged out and dusted off whenever the kids advanced beyond the constraints of basic physical education. The Danger Room routines were a completely different kind of training altogether, encouraging them to use their varying mutations in live combat simulations. Ultra was the only singular candidate that could test the systems to their absolute limit and fully demonstrate what the Danger Room could offer in terms of experience.  
It all sounded like a badly written course prospectus to her.  
“As Ultra has demonstrated, the Danger Room is the epitome of battle simulators. We can program any environment and any adversary to give you the ultimate training experience. Your sessions will not be as advanced as the one you have just witnessed but they will encourage you to use your abilities in different ways to ensure you complete your objective.”  
Ultra sidled off to the side of the room, not really paying attention to Xavier’s introduction to the whims and wonders of the Danger Room. She leant against the wall with one foot bent up beneath her and flexed her knuckles. It felt good to blow the dust off some of her training, especially when she wasn’t surrounded by sharp-shooters. Stryker’s men had always waited on the sidelines during her rigorous training sessions with their guns poised to shoot. If she had set a toe out of line or had not performed properly it never took long for a bullet to slice into her. Sometimes it was in her back, sometimes her chest, but mostly they were flesh wounds. They always motivated her to do better, to hit the bulls-eye or to camouflage herself. Here things were different, almost backward in comparison. Charles Xavier always looked at her with respect and affection, never asking her to do more than she was able and always expecting her to say no. There were no real punishments here. The living arrangements were more liberal.  
She still felt like a performing monkey though.  
Ultra’s eyes strayed to Xavier’s team. Danger Room sessions were the only times she saw them all together. They were the X-Men, the old man’s favourite students who had all become lifers at the institute. They had graduated to become instructors in their own respective fields but they all united for practise runs. Ultra had seen them all in action in the Danger Room once before and hadn’t thought much of their efforts. Xavier had watched her scrutinise their performance, her eyes taking in every hesitation, every incompetent use of abilities and every insubordinate move. The latter always came from the Wolverine – Logan, as he preferred her to call him. An involuntary smile escaped her. He was very much one of Stryker’s children; none of them played well with others. As for his compatriots, their lack of sufficient training was evident and Xavier wanted Ultra to help him rectify that. She wasn’t convinced it could be done and neither was she convinced that she actually gave enough of a shit to help.  
There were four major players:  
Storm, also known as Aurora Monroe, was a weather manipulator who had more than enough arsenal to back up her seemingly meek, mild nature.   
Cyclops – Scott Summers – had the authority of a leader with the firepower to back it up but lacked discipline and respect from his team, especially from Logan. His red optic blasts could level a whole street of buildings but he could be a bit too trigger-happy sometimes. His power was also a handicap because he was a walking nuke without the quartz lens shades that kept his explosive eyes in check.  
Jean Grey – no alias that Ultra had heard – was the semi-competent telekinetic. Her powers were poorly developed, probably from the woman’s own self-doubt and closed mind, and she had to concentrate far too hard just to levitate a book across the room. Her pitiful telepathic abilities were just as lacklustre, especially compared to a master like Xavier, even though Ultra would never say that to his face or his mind, as it were.  
Finally there was Wolverine – Logan – who was the muscular wrecking ball that always broke team without apology. His infatuation with Jean was notorious around the institute and it fuelled his open insubordination towards Scott, whether on a mission or just lazing about the house. Logan’s military training wasn’t as advanced as Ultra’s but he could hold his own until his emotions got in the way. He was definitely the muscle behind Scott’s brain.  
As Ultra watched Storm, Scott and Jean from across the room, Jean’s eyes flicked towards her as if sensing that she was being scrutinised. The dominant female that she was, Ultra maintained the gaze until Jean broke it. Neither woman liked the other for reasons that neither understood. Ultra had the feeling that it had something to do with Logan. She could smell the pheromones pouring off Jean whenever he was around, despite the fact that she was supposed to be in a relationship with Scott. Ultra grinned to herself and ducked out. She was sick of being cooped up and knew exactly where she was heading.  
When she was clear of the control room, she teleported up through the corridors of the main house and materialised in her suite. She reached under the bed and wrapped her hand around the thick strap of her shoulder bag, giving it a tug to pull it free from the hook that she had planted in the wooden slats beneath the mattress. A quick flick through the contents assured her that everything was present and she had a few dollars in notes. That would hopefully be enough for a round of drinks but she could always win more.   
Ultra was just about to head out through the window when an authoritative voice appeared in her head.  
“Ultra, I would like to speak to you in my office please.”  
She was half-tempted to just pretend that she hadn’t heard the instruction but knew that it wouldn’t wash. That man was omnipotent; he saw all and knew all. It was a fucking buzz-kill.  
Ultra heaved a sigh and sent him back a telepathic response. She could have severed their mental link before making her irritation clear but then where was the fun in that? Instead of being hurt by her scornful attitude, Charles Xavier seemed only to be amused. That was his permanent attitude as far she was concerned. Everything seemed to amuse him, as if nothing about her from her myriad of abilities to her scornful retorts took him by surprise. That fact only frustrated her even more, especially considering this whole pointless exercise was going to interfere with her drinking time.  
   
Charles smiled through the large windows at the back of his office. He had been tempted to watch Ultra try and conspicuously sneak out of the house. After all, he could feel her tension in the air, pulling the invisible cords between the molecules tighter than his X-Men’s spandex outfits.   
She and Logan were alike in so many ways.   
It only took a few seconds before Charles felt her materialise outside his office door. He called out for her to enter just as she had raised her fist to knock.  
“So?” Ultra asked, strutting into the room and settling herself in one of the easy chairs. It was a neutral word but her expression spoke of anger and frustration. Charles wasn’t sorry that he had interrupted her.  
“Thank you for seeing me,” he said, manoeuvring his chair around to face her. He leant back, drumming his fingers together thoughtfully. “That was a very impressive display in the Danger Room just now.”  
Ultra just fixed him with a look of nonchalance. She was a woman of few words.  
“The students were all very impressed with your strategy. Unfortunately they didn’t perform as well as I’d hoped when it came to their turn.”  
“And you think that my taking over from Scott will improve their chances if ever you have to send them into battle?” She asked with a smirk of light amusement. “I sincerely doubt it.”  
“Someone with your extensive military training would test their abilities in a more appropriate exercise,” Charles said. He knew that Ultra wasn’t integrating well with those at the institute. The fact hadn’t worried him at first but she had resided with them over a month now and the situation still hadn’t improved. Storm had intimated on a few occasions that Ultra and Logan had developed quite an attachment but Charles had yet to see it be of benefit. Both she and Logan were so secretive that they usually ensconced themselves in a private nook somewhere. Charles knew that Logan would become fixated on some kind of relationship with Ultra, whether innocent or otherwise, when he learned of their shared experiences and he had hoped that the relationship would help both of them grow more at ease with their surroundings. So far it had only served to isolate them more.  
“I know nothing that would be of benefit to your students,” Ultra said in deadpan tones. “The training I received was focussed solely on exploiting opportunities to eliminate targets. I don’t think you would want to turn your precious students into cold-blooded killers, because that’s all I’m good for.”  
“You underestimate yourself, my dear. I feel teaching might give you a sense of belonging and might help you feel a part of this place.”   
Suddenly Charles saw her expression soften. The hard, pinched look in her face faded to allow some colour back to the ghostly pallor and her eyes grew thoughtful, swimming in memories. “I haven’t belonged anywhere for a long time. All my life I’ve had to fight for survival, sometimes literally. I don’t remember how to belong. It’ll take more than teaching some bickering kids to do that.”  
“What about my X-Men?” Charles asked carefully. “You once expressed a drive to teach them.”  
“That wasn’t an ambition to teach them, it was an observation that they lacked discipline. There’s a big difference. They are perfect at what they do for the moment, which is teaching the kids. They aren’t designed for prolonged combat. Me and Logan were designed with loftier ambitions in mind. I don’t want to relive what happened by imparting those methods to your students. I’d just rather try and forget everything.”  
With that, Ultra stood up to leave. Charles watched her for a second, her aura pulsing with sadness and self-doubt. Her shoulders were heavy as she hoisted her bag off the ground and when she turned away from him, she allowed her hair to fall across her face, obscuring her from view. He knew that she wanted to let him in on her emotional turmoil. Charles could feel her soul crying out but he couldn’t do anything until Ultra allowed him. All he could do was wait for a moment like this when her facade slipped and the real, vulnerable side to Ultra was revealed. Charles knew that the belligerent, sullen young woman that he saw wasn’t the real person and he was impatient for her to trust him enough to let that facade go completely.  
Just as she reached for the door handle he took a risk; “Why don’t you study?”  
Ultra turned as if in slow motion. “What do you mean?”  
“Instead of lending your hand as a teacher, why don’t you take some classes? We have plenty of spaces available, especially in the sciences.”   
Her guard rose when he mentioned that particular subject. Jean had come to him a few weeks ago and told him that she had seen Ultra loitering outside her biology seminar as if in two minds whether to join in. Jean had been about to invite Ultra inside when she had just disappeared from view. But that was normal behaviour, so far as Charles understood. Ultra was content to exist on the fringes but when she realised that someone was about to extend the hand of friendship, she fled. She watched them all with two minds vying for dominance; the larger part of her wanted to resist and shun all kindness and neighbourliness, whereas the other part wanted to embrace the good around her and belong.  
Charles wasn’t sure how long Ultra had been in the hands of Stryker, or at what age she had become separated from her parents, but both experiences had damaged her tremendously. He swallowed the innate impulse whenever she was around but he always felt such pity for her. No creature was meant to be alone, not even the most powerful mutant on earth.  
“You have an amazing mind, Ultra,” Charles said, speaking carefully as if to a frightened rabbit. “Your capacity for adaptation is incredible. How else would you have survived Stryker’s experiment? Why not turn your mind to learning? Jean has told me that you seem interested in her science class and I think it would be a good idea for you to think about it.”  
“Is there anything else you think to be a good idea?” Ultra snapped, her expression turning steely before his eyes. “Why is it so important for me to have some occupation? Why can’t you people just leave me alone?” With that, she turned her back and passed through the wooden door.  
Charles heaved a sigh and stared at the space she had left behind.  
Because you are loved Ultra. We don’t know anything about you but we all know that we love you.  
   
She didn’t know why she was panting for breath but Ultra had to take a second when she became solid again at the other side of the door. That was precisely the reason that she loathed these private meetings. That was why she tried to put some distance between herself and him whenever they were in a room together. She wished that it was because he was a disgusting old letch, fondling her at any opportunity, but what Charles Xavier did was much worse. Sometimes she wished that he’d just grab her ass in a great handful so she could knock him the hell out of that chair of his. What he actually did was give her hope.  
Ultra wanted to block that last, telepathic part of their conversation out of her head but there was something about what he said that just kept resonating. It was as if he had put some kind of coding into the message that kept on repeating until you were driven mad.  
We don’t know anything about you but we all know that we love you.  
Sentimentality like that made her want to rip out her ears. How could the idiots in this huge building love her when they knew absolutely nothing? They were brainless, lovesick, sentimental fools. But Ultra couldn’t deny the little warmth that she felt in her heart. She hadn’t been loved since those days with the Freedom Fighters and Low, and that was a different kind of love. These idiots wanted her to belong to their motley crew, not just to have the glory of the most powerful mutant in existence sleeping under their roof but to have her as a friend. The larger part of her wanted to run fast and long to get away from it but the reasoning in her brain asked her where she would go if not here. Trying to find Low was completely out of the question. If he had even survived his dalliance with Stryker the odds were high that he would be under surveillance after her escape. Stryker would be waiting for her. At least here she could drop off the radar, one mutant among many.  
Her mind slipped to what Charles had said about taking some classes. She reached into her bag and took out a dog-eared notebook. She held it open, spine down, and flicked through the pages with her telekinesis. Every single page was full of notes, diagrams and graphs. Ultra disliked Jean for reasons that she didn’t fully understand but she was a good teacher.   
Ultra remembered always having a natural flair for the sciences, a flair that had only heightened since her mutations had manifested. The subject of genetics, especially screwed up ones, fascinated her. She wanted to try and figure out what it was about those tiny, mysterious strands and base-pairs that resulted in such amazing abilities. She hadn’t had the opportunity to progress like most kids and her dream of one day studying at university was a far off fantasy now, but it would be nice to learn a foundation that could possibly one day lead to a research project. That was when she had been naive enough to dream.  
Scowling at the pages, Ultra slammed the book closed and hurled it down the corridor. What had dreaming ever given her?  
She turned to march off down the corridor, almost bumping into Jean Grey. Their eyes met but neither woman said a word. They regarded each other for a moment before Ultra stepped to the side of her and walked away, her heels grinding her dreams into the floor.  
   
Jean Grey watched Ultra march away. She wished that she could have said that the girl walked like she had a great rod shoved up her backside, but the opposite was true. That all-powerful mutant, the one that shouldn’t have had a care in the world, walked like she was terminally ill with her shoulders rounded, her body language closed off and all hope ebbing away. She had the power to bend everyone to her whim and manipulate the very fabric of nature but she was so lost. Jean could feel Ultra’s thoughts churning and cascading, making her aura pulse like a nuclear reactor about to explode. There wasn’t a single person in the institute that envied her.   
Jean focused on the notebook that she had seen Ultra writing in outside her classroom and knitted her brows together, straining hard to levitate the book into her open hand. It was so frustrating feeling like her powers weren’t developing. The Professor had tried to help her with exercises and meditation regimes to try and get her to break into the vault that she knew existed within herself. It was as if her powers were caged inside a concrete chamber with only a tiny hole for some of it to escape through. She desperately wanted to take a sledgehammer to that wall and make the hole bigger. Seeing Ultra in the Danger Room calling on so many abilities and controlling them at once was almost demeaning for her. Psychic abilities were the most impressive and the most revered of all the mutations in existence and Jean Grey felt like a fraud.  
With the notebook in hand, Jean knocked on the door to the Professor’s office.  
“Come in Jean.”  
“I take it your latest conversation went as well as can be expected,” she said, walking over to the other side of the desk and kissing Charles’ forehead. He squeezed her hand in response before she took a seat.  
“Ultra is a very complicated person, Jean. It could take me years to build up her trust enough to learn anything about her beyond speculation.”  
“Well, it seems that you have touched a nerve somehow.” She brandished the notebook and placed it on his desk. “I came around the corner just as she threw that down the corridor.”  
Charles heaved a sigh as he thumbed absent-mindedly through the notebook. Jean saw the helplessness etched deep into his face and wished that Ultra could see the toll she was taking on him. When he wasn’t teaching his classes, every waking moment was spent thinking about their newcomer and ways to encourage her to integrate with the others. Her resistance was affecting him and Jean wanted to do something to get Ultra to open her eyes to what she was doing to the people around her.  
“What did you say to her?” Jean asked.  
“I just suggested that she might like to study if she was averse to teaching. You’ve seen her outside your classes and I gave her the option to take up a place. She seemed hopeful for a moment but then closed off again. I’m running out of ideas.”  
“Maybe you should just move on,” Jean said. “I know it’s hard for you but Ultra has made it very clear that she doesn’t want to integrate at the moment. Maybe if you let her have some space for a while she might change her mind.”  
“I was hoping that getting close to Logan might encourage her to make more friends.”  
Jean’s heart grew cold in her chest and instantly started thundering. “She’s getting close to Logan?” she asked, trying to maintain a cool tone but it was hard to fool a telepathic.  
The Professor passed her an understanding smile and nodded. “I had a feeling that they would, especially when Logan learned that she has been through the same process that he has. Blessedly, Ultra has kept the intricacies of the procedure to herself as I requested. I want Logan to try and come to some understanding himself with his own memories. But they do spend some time together.”  
Jean nodded and swallowed hard. Despite being perfectly happy with Scott, she couldn’t help feeling attracted to Logan. She kept telling herself that it was his bad boy quality and that the infatuation would pass but so far it hadn’t. Every time she caught him watching her, she lost herself in those brown eyes of his. He was dangerous and exciting. While Scott still excited her all these years on, he wasn’t dangerous. Scott Summers, his explosive, uncontrolled mutation aside, was the epitome of safety. He would lay down his life to protect her and she would do the same for him. It was just she had been with him so long and Logan was new and different.  
“That’s good for them,” Jean thought aloud, gazing off into space. Then she felt a great maelstrom of resentment towards Ultra build inside her. Nothing had been the same since Ultra had turned up, exhausted and semi-conscious that night. Logan had taken one look at her claws and had been consumed with intrigue, and Charles was just as fascinated by her capabilities. All of a sudden, Jean Grey had been pushed out, left to lurk on the fringes of all the meetings and discussions that she had once been in the middle of.  
She felt replaced. It didn’t help that Ultra was younger, prettier and a hell of a lot more powerful. It still stung, nevertheless.  
“If only I could get her to trust me,” Charles muttered, more to himself than her. “There has to be a way.”  
“She’ll come around with time,” she answered with a heavy sigh. “But don’t be disappointed if she doesn’t.”  
He nodded absent-mindedly. “I think I’ll take a drive this afternoon.”  
“Do you want me to drive you?”  
Charles shook his head. “No, I’ll use Bailey. I need a change of scenery. I need to clear my head.”  
Jean frowned as he flicked the control pad of his wheelchair and powered himself out of the room. He paused for a moment to rub his eyes before continuing, throwing her a brief ‘goodbye’ over his shoulder. It wasn’t like Charles to get so involved with a new mutant. He was walking the fine line between curiosity and obsession and Jean didn’t want to see him go onto the wrong side. Telepathic mutants were more susceptible to mental problems and, as strong as the Professor was, she had a feeling that the mystery surrounding Ultra might tip him over the edge.  
   
Ultra landed on hot, solid tarmac and took a deep breath of freedom. As free and easy as life was at Xavier’s institute, the air still stank of confinement and it always managed to send shivers down her spine if she was exposed to it for too long. Right here, right now on a cool day with the sun hiding behind low-lying clouds, she finally felt at peace.  
Scratchy, static-marred music reached her ears as she looked upon the tired facade of an old bikers’ haunt. Actually, ‘tired’ was an understatement; the wood-framed windows were rotting in the walls, the door was hanging on for dear life and the front lot was peppered with shattered glass and discarded cans, rolling around like tumbleweed. Only a very skilled pair of hands and a hefty budget would bring this place back to any kind of charm. The way it was now it appeared that even the CDC would give it a wide berth.  
Ultra smiled at the dilapidation. It was perfect.  
She marched past the congregation of motorcycles all parked side by side like dominoes waiting to fall, ignoring the small group of old timers that stood off to the side, chain smoking and watching her with a lecherous eye. The interior of the bar was a whole lot worse than the outside. It was dark, dingy and smelled of stale alcohol, dust and neglect but every single chair and table was full. It looked like the kind of place where fugitives would go to hide.  
The assortment of men inside looked a lot like the ones out front; most were probably in their fifties with long hair and most of their faces obscured by beards so long that they could tie a noose around their necks. Tattoos of varying degrees of tastefulness were on show, etched into arms the size of tree trunks. The overwhelming scent of sweat and leather was enough to make her cry onion tears. The dusty pool table to Ultra’s right was flanked by some younger guys, probably in the thirties age bracket, and some of them had hard, toned bodies unlike the loose guts that were prevalent everywhere else. All of them tossed her a mean glare when they saw her.   
Every single one of them eyeballed Ultra as if she was more than the freak that she was underneath the skin. Their looks were a cross between shock and suspicion. After all, the entire place was devoid of women so why would a young chit like her feel the urge to come in? Even the wizened old bartender hesitated in his clichéd rubbing of a pint glass. There was a vacant seat at the bar so Ultra aimed for it.  
Out of nowhere she felt a slap explode across her ass. It stopped her mid-step. She turned very slowly to the right and faced the table of four that she was almost past. The multiple belly rolls attracted her attention first and then the sausage hand that suggestively tapped a thigh that would make a tailor’s eyes water. The face was about as fat as the body, the neck disappearing beneath ounces of extra chins. The eyes sparkled as if he thought himself a catch beneath the engine grease and stale cigarette smoke.   
“How’s it sweetheart? Let’s you and me get better acquainted.” For emphasis he traced his other hand across his crotch which was swelling against his too-tight trousers. From Ultra’s vantage point, there didn’t appear to be much to get anyone’s motor running.  
A tiny smile played at the corners of her mouth as she trailed her fingers down the side of his mountainous face. Then she closed her fingers around the collar of the flannel shirt and she hoisted his bulk up off the chair. The other three men at the table instantly backed off as Ultra just managed to get his feet off the floor before flinging his twenty-five stone weight to the other side of the room. With a surprised wail, he smashed into the scratchy jukebox, destroying it beyond all human repair.   
“Anyone else care to try that again?” she addressed the staring crowd, meeting every single pair of eyes and staring them down until they looked away. Every single one of those dogs learned that she was the alpha. No one spoke; they all just turned back to their drinks and resumed a hushed conversation. No one made an effort to help the unconscious brute on the floor, suffocating the jukebox debris.  
“Nicely done,” a growling voice said as Ultra took the empty seat at the bar.  
She smiled at the man to her left. “Why thank you, my brother.”  
Logan blew a torrent of cigar smoke down his nose and signalled the bartender. “A bottle for my girl.”  
“So this is where you skulk off to every night,” Ultra mused, looking around the filthy bar with its dusty bottles, cobwebs and dead insects. “Charming.”  
“It’s not that bad,” he replied, taking a long drink from the neck of his own bottle. “It’s the closest place in thirty miles and they serve cheap beer. Say no more.”  
The bartender placed a bottle of Bud in front of her without making eye contact and then scuttled away.  
“They certainly know how to treat a lady. I like that.”   
She broke the cap off the bottle and blew an ice-cold breath across the top, turning the lukewarm beer into something more drinkable. She took a long draw, throwing her head back and deep-throating the stuff as if it was going to save her life.  
“Seems like you’ve had an interesting day,” Logan thought aloud, massaging his knuckles absent-mindedly.  
“He had me running simulations in the Danger Room again so that the kiddies can see how the thing works. Sliced the head off a Sentinel which was fun. He’s hankering after me becoming an instructor or going back to school.”  
“Is that really a bad thing?” he asked, turning around so that he was almost facing her head-on. “You know, he’s not a bad guy. All he wants to do is help.”  
Ultra nodded and took another fortifying drink. “I know but I just can’t let myself trust him.”  
“Then why did you travel all this way looking to use his place as a sanctuary?”  
She smiled to herself. Logan was right but it wasn’t as easy as he made it sound. When he had first arrived at the institute he had felt exactly the same as she had; he had viewed the X-Men as incompetent, self-righteous idiots who were playing with fire. He hadn’t trusted them a single iota. The only reason he had stuck around in the beginning was because Charles might have been the key to unlocking Logan’s amnesia. Then he had stuck around because of Jean and now he was a semi-permanent fixture on the team. Ultra had only travelled to the institute because she had felt the warmth in Jason Stryker’s mind when she had accessed his memories. The only way she could avoid Stryker’s detection was to find some kind of sanctuary and Charles had been the only option. Ultra knew that she needed protection and concealment and she knew, deep down, that she wouldn’t be exploited by this new benefactor. But what Charles had offered her was so incredible that she was waiting for the expiration date to lapse. Where she was concerned, nothing was ever given for free. So far the wise old Professor had not pressured her or tried to lead her down a path that she didn’t want to go down, but Ultra was constantly on edge, waiting for it to happen.   
It didn’t matter that everyone in the institute, student and X-Man alike, loved him unconditionally and would lay their lives down to protect him. Ultra was a cynic. She had been through far too much to just sell her soul to the first nice guy that came along.  
“You think I’m being unfair to him don’t you?” she asked her brother, knowing that out of everyone Logan would be honest with her.  
“Not unfair but you need to let him in a bit more. Xavier just wants to help you. His field of expertise is normally helping new mutants develop their abilities and get some control over them but his work is already done with you and me. He just wants to be there for you, to hear about everything you went through and to try and help you deal with it.”  
“I just have a hard time opening up to people,” she replied with a sigh. “Let’s face it Logan, I haven’t exactly had the best of experiences with people. My parents didn’t exactly like me before I became a mutant but then my abilities manifested and I was out the door faster than we can out our claws. I had to live on the streets because no one would help me. I was just some freak of nature with explosive powers and no control. By the time I hooked up with likeminded people I had adopted this mentality that isolated me from everyone. I still view everyone as a potential threat and don’t let anyone close enough as a result. Unfortunately that includes the Professor.”  
“Some part of you must trust him because you pushed yourself beyond the limit to get to the institute.”  
“I pushed myself to the brink in order to reach a sanctuary,” Ultra said. “It wasn’t to find him, it was to find somewhere I might be safe. Don’t convince yourself that I don’t want to integrate and don’t want to trust Charles, Logan, because I do. I want to eventually become a part of life rather than exist on the fringes because I have done that for too long. I just need to get my bearings first. All I’ve known for a long time is pain, training and persecution and that takes a lot to reprogram. For God’s sake, I don’t even sleep in the fucking bed that’s in my room!”  
Logan actually looked shocked by her revelation. “You’re kidding right?”  
“No. Charles has put me in that fancy-schmancy room and I still can’t bear to sleep in the bed. I’ve slept on a metal slab for so long that it feels like all those covers and that mattress just smother me.”  
A small grin played at the corners of his mouth. “And you’re vulnerable to a surprise attack.”  
As Ultra looked at Logan she knew that he must have some memory or some feeling about what it was like at Alkali Lake. Only someone who had been through what they had could perceive a situation with such a tactical understanding. “Exactly,” she answered, nodding.  
Logan nodded his head once at her and held up his bottle for a ‘cheers’. Ultra knocked them together at the neck and joined him in the drink.  
“This may sound crazy, little sis’, but I understand what you mean. When I arrived at the institute I couldn’t stand sleeping in a bed but I didn’t know why. I looked around the room as you probably did and I found the perfect tactical position for bunking down. It took months to get those habits out of my head. You’ll get there too, but the trigger for me was actually starting to feel like a part of the group. Rogue really likes you so you’ve already got one fan amongst the students. Most of the kids are curious but don’t know how to approach you, so do the hard work for them. Sit in the common room once in a while, even if you hate what’s on the TV. Take a book in there instead of hiding out in the library.”  
Ultra listened to her brother talk and talk about ways that she could change her fortunes at Xavier’s place. She had a very faint, almost-forgotten memory from her days back in England when she had been what most people would call popular. She’d had a plethora of friends and had been at the epicentre of the social circle in her classes. She had probably even had a best friend once upon a time, someone in whom she could confide the more private aspects of her life, but never her darkest secrets. Then her mutations had appeared and everything had changed.   
During her time with the Freedom Fighters, Ultra had wanted to integrate with them but Lilo had made it clear early on that her presence was merely as a trump card. Ultra was a tactical advantage rather than a true member of the group. She was sure that Lilo had been jealous of hers and Low’s natural chemistry, seeing as Lilo had been the primary fixture in his bed for most of Ultra’s tenure. But nobody in that team was ever really a friend. They had never had the chance to nurture those kinds of relationships. There was plenty of potential, however. Ultra resolved to instigate a change for herself, and she would start by making more of an effort with Rogue. After all, she could probably help the girl exert some control over that life-hindering absorption ability of hers.   
Swallowing down another mouthful of Bud, Ultra smiled at her brother. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re too perceptive for your own good?”  
Logan smirked at his bottle, spinning it around on the spot. “It’s taken practise. There was once a time when even you wouldn’t have liked me.”  
She balled up a fist and issued him a playful, semi-serious punch to the shoulder. “And you underestimate me.”  
“I don’t doubt that.”  
Ultra was just about to change the subject to something more light-hearted when suddenly she felt a rush of pressure in her ears. Her hearing cut off and it felt as if a concrete block had encased her brain. The strain was unbelievable.   
Logan leapt out of his seat when he saw her starting to fall. She saw his mouth moving, probably asking a myriad of questions about what was going on but she couldn’t hear him. All she could do was clamp her arms over her ears and around her head to try and crush out the pain.  
ULTRA!  
The exclamation smashed into her brain with such force that she was flung backwards off her seat, her eyes rolling uncontrollably as she battled to try and regain some control. Every effort she made to raise her mental barriers against the intruder was thwarted. It was as if whoever had infiltrated her considerable defences had brought a baseball bat along for the ride.  
The voice appeared again, no holds barred and with the combined force of three Mack trucks travelling down the highway. ULTRA, HELP ME! DON’T C....GATHER THE...  
Silence.  
The pain and pressure disappeared as if it had never been there at all. She hadn’t been able to identify the voice until it was gone and the psychic imprints had been left on her mind.  
Charles was in danger.  
“Ultra?” Logan’s voice swam to her through the incessant ringing in her ears, barely audible. “Ultra, what happened? Are you OK?”  
The silence that hung over the bar seemed to have grown denser as her senses returned. Every eye was on her once again but this time because she was practically laying face-down on the dusty, filthy floor. She could feel Logan gripping her under one armpit while his other hand skimmed her back. All Ultra could do was lie there for a few moments, focussing just on her breathing. It was an incredibly violating feeling having someone invade your mind, no matter the circumstances. For Charles to have conducted himself in such a way must mean that he was in dire trouble but that didn’t make the feeling any easier. The sheer power with which he had contacted her gave her some idea as to how powerful a mutant the gentle old man actually was underneath the English decorum and politeness.  
As she lay there with Logan looking down on her with such worry etched into his face, Ultra tentatively reached out with her mind to try and contact Charles. It was a potentially dangerous move because if he had been taken by another mutant there could be some kind of watch on him, monitoring his psychic activity, but she needed to know. She probed outwards with her mind, her power an infinitesimal thread so as to avoid detection. She tried to track the path the psychic energy had taken but it was as if it had disappeared into nothingness. Everything left a stain on the atmosphere, like an insect causing a twitch in a spider’s web, but Charles had simply vanished. Ultra couldn’t risk increasing her presence any further. There had to be some way to track him...  
“Ultra, speak to me,” Logan commanded, giving her a rough shake. He could see that her eyes were open and that she was focussing on something but the comatose appearance didn’t seem to be doing his nerves any good.  
She took a deep breath and stirred, erecting her mental barriers again as she began to move. With every movement she added another layer to the fortifications until they resembled galvanised steel as thick as she could manage. Nothing would get through them this time. Logan’s grip tightened around her arm and waist and he lifted her to her feet.   
“Are you alright?”  
“I kind of want to throw up,” Ultra muttered, bending double against the urge. “But I’ll be OK.”  
“What the hell happened?”  
“Charles. Something’s happened. He’s in danger.”  
“Holy shit,” Logan muttered in a shocked undertone. “What can we do?”  
Ultra straightened herself slowly with another deep breath that she blew out through pursed lips. “The only thing we can do,” she said, holding out her hand to him. “We help.”  
Somewhat tentatively Logan took her hand. She had barely finished telling him to brace himself when she suddenly teleported, dragging him into the void with her. Less than a second had passed before they materialised at the front entrance of the mansion but it was long enough to make him throw up the beers he’d drunk into one of the pruned hedges.   
Leaving her brother to right himself, Ultra marched through the doors. Classes must have let out because the common room was full of people fighting over the TV, table football and pool. Some of them eyed her with their usual caution while others just ignored her completely. She didn’t care. She had more important things on her mind. She sent out a huge psychic shout, hailing all the X-Men by name.   
“Ultra?”  
For the smallest of moments, she thought about how fucking sick she was of hearing her name. Then she looked down the corridor and saw Rogue and her boyfriend walking towards her.  
“You don’t look so good. Is everything OK?”  
Ultra eyed the girl that had tried so hard to be her friend with cool detachment before remembering her promise to Logan. “Where are the instructors?” she asked.  
“They’re all around here somewhere. What’s going on?”  
“Something’s happened and I need them.”  
Rogue and Bobby exchanged a worried glance. “We can help you find them,” Bobby said.  
“No, I just need to find the others,” she replied. “I can handle this.” She made to walk away but Rogue wrapped her gloved hand around Ultra’s wrist, holding her back. Her first instinct was to grab the girl by the throat and throw her backwards out the fancy, oak front door but that was just her training talking. How was she ever going to be able to make friends with any of these people if she kept viewing them as a potential threat?  
“Ultra, we want to help. What is going on?” Rogue said, her voice as stern as it could get when it was laced with that sweet southern twang.  
Ultra took a look at the kids in the common room making themselves busy with pretending not to eavesdrop and she lowered her voice to a murmur. “The Professor is in trouble.”  
That was all the convincing that the two of them needed. When Ultra marched off down the corridor to the main ops room they followed, unshakeable in their resolve to assist. She tried to convince herself that she didn’t like their interference but it was actually kind of nice.   
Jean, Scott and Storm were all present when she arrived. Logan brought up the rear a few moments later looking a little recovered from the teleport. Scott opened his mouth to ask the same inane question that she had been asked too many times but she interrupted him with the details.  
“The Professor is in danger.”  
Instantly all their postures shifted into a defensive stance. “What do you mean? How do you know?” Jean asked.  
“You mean you didn’t feel it?” Ultra asked, genuinely surprised. Even an entry-level telepath like Jean Grey should have felt the psychic thundercloud when it had hit. “The guy barrelled into my head with all the force of a battering ram and you’re telling me you didn’t even feel a blip?”  
Jean sucked her cheeks in and folded her arms across her chest.  
“That wasn’t meant as a judgement Jean, I’m just shocked that you didn’t feel it at all. It almost knocked me out.”  
“What did he tell you?” Scott asked.  
“All I heard clearly was my name. He was just screaming it, but not because he was in pain. It was as if he only had a second to get his point across and he was willing to do anything to get my attention. He said he needed help and then the rest just fizzled out. He sounded desperate. How did someone get hold of him?”  
“Charles went out for a drive about an hour ago,” Scott said.  
“Did he have anyone with him?” Logan growled.  
Jean shook her head. “No, just Bailey. I offered to drive him but he said that he needed some time to clear his head.” She punctuated her sentence with a cold, meaningful glare at Ultra who merely rolled her eyes.  
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. You all think that I’m the devil-incarnate because I haven’t bought into your do-gooder crap yet and I’ve been a heartless bitch, not caring that I’ve gotten the guy all worked up. Can we just put all that on the back-burner until we get him back?”   
Ultra stared at every single one of their judgemental but uncomprehending faces. They didn’t understand her at all and they weren’t likely to but that wasn’t what was important.   
She softened her voice a little. After all, they were on the same side. “Have there been any threats against him lately? Any old nemeses rising from the ashes?”  
Each of the three shook their heads without any hesitation. “I don’t think Charles even has any enemies,” Storm added.  
Ultra couldn’t help the sarcastic smirk. “Everyone has enemies Storm.”  
“Has anyone noticed anything unusual going on?” Scott asked Ultra’s next question. “Has the Professor been acting out of character? There must be something!”  
More clueless head-shaking answered his question.  
Ultra heaved an exasperated sigh. “Then the only thing we have to go on is the fact that he contacted me. I tried to trace him as soon as he was interrupted but I couldn’t get even a sniff of him. Maybe that big magnetron he has on-hand will give us a bit of perspective.”  
“Do you mean Cerebro?” Jean asked. “How could that help us?”  
Ultra was already leaving the ops room. The door to Cerebro was right at the end of the corridor. “It tracks mutants, correct?” Mumbles of an affirmative reached her ears. “Then it can track anything.”  
“But how?” Scott demanded. “The Professor is the only one that can use it.”  
She gave a disdainful snort. “Really? Charles Xavier is the only psychic powerful enough to use the thing? Give me some credit!”  
Logan grinned and gave Scott a patronising pat on the back. “Nicely done, bub. Smooth.”  
Scott shrugged him off and sidestepped him like they were back in high school and Logan was ten seconds away from giving him a lurgie. Ultra suppressed a smile.  
The door to Cerebro resembled that of a bank vault with its polished chrome reflecting the fluorescent light. A glowing blue retinal scanner sat to the right of it, so low to the floor that Ultra had to bow on bended knee.   
“It’s only coded to Charles’ biometrics,” Jean interjected as the scan began.  
The blue laser beam analysed Ultra’s retinal prints at the same time as she engaged the mutation that allowed her to overwrite the programming, effectively dialling herself into the access log at the same time as trying to get in.   
Welcome Ultra.  
With an approving sound, the lock shifted and the doors slid open on their silent hydraulics, revealing the cavernous space that enabled Charles to locate any mutant anywhere. Ultra knew that there was a lot more to the giant computer than just that, especially at the hands of a skilled operator with an other-worldly control over machinery. With her heels echoing ominously, she walked inside. The others followed behind but at a safe distance. She looked very slowly and very carefully up into the dome ceiling, taking in every single metal panel and every crevice that lay between. She could sense the curiosity of the mutants stood behind her but she wasn’t about to reveal her plans before she knew if they would work.  
The main console was painfully sparse. Cerebro had been designed for solely mental operation. Ultra didn’t need Charles’ elaborate headset to be able to feel the computer teasing her mental acuity, itching to do its thing. With a deep breath, she cracked her knuckles and projected her powers out in fine, probing tendrils. They penetrated Cerebro’s CPU and began inputting user preferences. Ultra heaved a small sigh, her eyes flicking from one metal panel to another. This was going to take a lot of work.

Charles Xavier was drowning in his own body, sinking deeper and deeper into the crushing, black oblivion with his paralysed legs weighing him down like concrete shoes. It was the strangest feeling, knowing that he was sinking deeper and deeper without being able to see where he was going. The sick feeling that probably held his stomach in a tight grip seeped into his thoughts. All the while, the darkness swirled around him as if it had a life of its own.   
Charles could hear voices whispering to him in all directions, as if he had blacked out in Cerebro with the interface still activated. Out of the din he was able to isolate the voices of Jean and Scott but he couldn't make out what they were saying. Then Ultra was there, short, sharp and fading away as quickly as she had appeared. Her face was the only thing that appeared in his mind's eye, surging towards him as if he was a camera lens superimposing on a subject. Then she pulled back into the darkness. The only sense in the madness around him, Charles tried to reach her. He fought against the darkness around him, imagining his arms clawing at the shadows so that it felt like he was actually moving. He could see her hovering in the distance, just her face and nothing else. But as quickly as he seemed to gain on her, the darkness turned into oil again and dragged him back down.  
Charles...  
He tried to open his mouth to answer the voice but his jaw felt as if it was wired shut.  
Charles, where are you? Help me find you.  
He strained against his bonds but try as he might, he couldn't answer her. He could see her slipping further and further away with each passing moment. With a single, desperate move against his paralysis, Charles gathered up whatever strength he had left and pushed off towards her. The darkness seemed to part as he moved, swimming in a laboured fashion. Closer and closer he came, straining to reach her.  
Suddenly Ultra's shape began to become distorted. At first she was just a head floating in the sludge that kept him prisoner, then her body seemed to spring out from the base of her neck, giving birth to her arms and legs. As she reached for him, their hands almost touching, a bright light suddenly emitted from her, engulfing both of them. Charles could feel the light driving away the darkness all around him and when it touched him he almost felt as if Ultra's lips were pressed against his own. Hands seemed to wrap around his face. Then his eyes opened.  
The world almost blinded him at first, his mind flooded with such an intense pain that felt like he’d received several blows to the head with a metal baton. He could feel his head lolling from side to side, punch-drunk from the thing that was attached to his skull. The weight of it pressed down on his neck, crushing him into the uncomfortable metal seat that he was strapped to.  
“So, you’re awake at last,” a strange voice addressed him in a dialect that he couldn’t quite place. “I’m in desperate need of some conversation over here.”  
Through the fog that still impeded his vision, Charles could just make out a dark figure over by what appeared to be the door, sat at a table at an odd angle. The figure kept shuffling something around on the table, moving in a regimented pattern from body to table and back again. He tried to reach out with his psychic tendrils to try and penetrate his gaoler’s mind but they hit a dead end, bouncing back into his brain with treble the power he had put into them. With his head rolling from the agony that echoed in his head, Charles tried to gather his thoughts while the man across the room chuckled over whatever he was doing.  
“Now, I wouldn’t try that again if I was you,” he said. “The boss figured you might try and use that little power of yours. Of course, he took measures to make sure that wouldn’t happen.”   
“Who are you?” Charles asked, his mouth sandpaper dry. “What am I doing here?”  
“Well now, that would be telling wouldn’t it?”  
As his vision began to clear, Charles managed to focus for the first time on the man that was acting as his gaoler; he was dressed head-to-toe in black with a dark brown leather overcoat over the top. His boots were thickly set, obviously serving well in a fight, and he wore a strange Lycra headpiece that covered his ears and the sides of his face but that allowed his unruly brown hair to escape from the top. His eyes were mostly black, tinged with red irises and his fingers played with a deck of cards, flicking them over and over between his fingers. They had an eerie glow about them that pulsed if he held on to them for too long, and the aura that the man emitted was dangerous and explosive.   
“Damn,” the man muttered to himself. “Bested again.” With a broad sweeping motion, he gathered the cards and tidied them back into the deck before shuffling them. He fixed Charles with a penetrating stare. “So you’re the famous Charles Xavier. I’ve heard a lot about you.”  
“You have me at a disadvantage.”  
“My name is Remy LeBeau,” the man replied. “But most other people call me Gambit.” With a grin, he held up one of his playing cards between index and middle finger as if his moniker amused him. “Originally of New Orleans, Louisiana but now I’m somewhat of a mercenary-for-hire.”  
“Come come, my dear Gambit. Are you entertaining our guest?”  
That was a voice that Charles knew exceedingly well.  
The heavy metal door behind Gambit slid open to reveal the wizened but very powerful Eric Lensherr.  
“Figured I may as well make conversation considering the old man’s been unconscious for hours.”  
“Eric,” Charles muttered. “What am I doing here?”  
With his red cape billowing behind him, Magneto sauntered into the room with a satisfied smile on his face. “It’s good to see you Charles.”  
“Don’t play games with me Eric, we’re both too old for that.”  
Using his extensive magnetic manipulation, Magneto pulled an identical metal chair over, the legs squealing across the floor. Flicking his cape over his left arm with a flourish, Eric sat down.  
“Apologies for the theatrics,” he began, the smile indicating that he wasn’t in the least bit sorry. “But I had to get you away from those students of yours.”  
“Why?”  
“Because you have encountered someone that interests me greatly.”  
Charles felt the blood run cold in his veins. “Should I be flattered that you’ve taken an interest in my students? First Rogue and now another.”  
Eric chuckled under his breath. “Rogue was simply a means to an end, nothing more. The one I’m interested in now is much more impressive, but then this is both of our first encounters with a Level Seven mutant.”  
“Then why go to all this trouble Eric?” Charles asked. “I’ve seen the collective abilities of your followers; you could have stormed the institute quite easily if you were motivated enough.”  
“That may be true, but your darling Level Seven has a quirk that I’m sure not even you know about. You see, I recruited a rather interesting mutant called Callisto who has the ability to locate mutants. That isn’t the interesting part; the interesting thing is that she can only locate your Level Seven when she uses her abilities.”  
“What do you mean?” Charles asked, his brow furrowing deeply with a frown that made the Grand Canyon look like an un-ironed shirt.  
Magneto smirked triumphantly and crossed his left leg over his right. “What I mean, Charles, is that your miraculous little find has become so accustomed to protecting herself that she is ‘off the grid’, to coin an American phrase. You have bagged yourself quite a dangerous catch, old friend.”  
Charles Xavier knew that he should have been surprised by Eric’s revelation but then he remembered seeing the spoiled X-ray films that Jean had tried to take when Ultra had collapsed that first night, and the snapped syringe needles that couldn’t penetrate her skin. Whatever happened to her at Stryker’s facility had imprinted on her mind so deeply that she kept herself in a permanent state of lockdown, whether unconscious or awake.   
“So you have kidnapped me in a vain attempt to flush her out,” Charles said, very matter-of-factly. “I’m sorry to disappoint you Eric, but she doesn’t care about me or anyone else. She has been through far too much to think about anything but her own well-being.”  
Eric laughed gently under his breath. “Charles, Charles, Charles. You underestimate how persuasive you can be. Why else would you have a mansion full of students? You promise them all a better life that they can achieve by controlling their powers to the point that they almost don’t exist anymore. I promise a life of power through embracing our superiority over the Homo sapiens. I know that this mutant has sought you out but she doesn’t belong with you. She needs to realise her potential with me. She alone could tip the balance in the war that is coming.”  
“Eric, don’t you understand that a mutant as powerful as her will follow her own path. She doesn’t need to answer to anyone. If you use her as a cannon in your war against the humans there will be nothing left for you to rule. Her power could be cataclysmic. Don’t you understand that unleashing her would be a terrible mistake?”  
“The only mistake that has been made in this situation, Charles, is that the humans have failed to recognise our true purpose; all we want is to live in peace. Peace must be taken and she will herald the dawn of a new age.”  
“Then why have you brought me here, Eric?” Charles demanded, getting irritated by the old man’s warmongering propaganda. “What do you have to gain?”  
Eric Lensherr’s grin turned into a smirk. “You are a test.”  
“A test?”  
“My Brotherhood is prepared to ward off an imminent attack. I need to know exactly what your mutant can do.”  
Charles couldn’t find the words to answer him. He had suspected that Eric had a loftier motive for the kidnapping than inciting another X-Men-Brotherhood face-off, the same as he had known that the kidnapping was not for assassination reasons. Charles and Eric had shared too much history for that. The most either wanted for the other was incapacitation, certainly not death.   
Charles remembered feeling the Bentley rumble and groan as some invisible force acted upon it. His driver, Bailey, had tried to get the car back under a degree of control but the force was too strong. Charles had known exactly who was responsible, the same as he knew that there was nothing he could do to stop the man behind it. Then the driver’s door had opened and Bailey, terrified, was dragged out by his metal belt buckle and dumped in a haphazard heap by the side of the road. When the car had left the tarmac altogether, Charles had tried to send out a distress signal to the first person that came to mind. He had put every ounce of desperate energy that he could muster into the psychic pulse in the vain hope that it would reach her in time. Even then he’d had some infinitesimal inkling as to Eric’s motives for the kidnapping, but to have them confirmed was something else entirely. Charles just hoped that Ultra really was selfish enough to stay behind when a rescue team was rallied.  
“Don’t look so afraid, Charles,” Eric said in a patronising tone. “You have nothing to worry about. This will be a perfectly painless exercise...for you.”  
The self-satisfied smirk was suddenly wiped from Magneto’s face when the door to the holding room behind him burst open and a member of his precious Brotherhood rushed inside.  
“Sir, I have sensed...”  
It all happened so fast that Charles registered only the girl’s long black ponytail and the shine from her leather trousers before she crumbled to the floor with her hands clasped over her ears, her legs churning as if trying to run. Then Gambit fell, his deck of cards scattering around him. Eric made no effort to go to his people’s aid before the thunder clap sounded and they were hit with a powerful downward force that, had Charles been free from his bonds, would have pinned him to his chair. The force was crushing, so strong that he felt the breath being squeezed from his chest. Eric seemed to be in a similar state, his eyes registering a moment of fear when he realised that he was cut off from his magnetic abilities while the force was active.  
“Eric, what have you done?” Charles shouted, his voice raised purely from the effort of resisting the pressure on his lungs.  
“Nothing.” The man’s reply was equally strained.  
As quickly as the force had descended, it suddenly retracted. Gambit helped the girl to her feet but they both appeared to be dazed from the encounter. Charles watched the fear disappear from Eric’s eyes, only to be replaced by glee. The triumphant glint was unmistakable. Then he knew that his warning had gone unheeded. Charles knew that the weight of his message to Ultra had gotten through but she hadn’t listened.  
She was leading the rescue effort.  
“Callisto, rally the forces. Tell them that the arrival of our guest is imminent. It looks like school is in session.”  
   
“Jean? Jean, are you OK?”  
She was consumed with the disturbing feeling of bobbing her head beneath the surface of the water, the water surging and rushing in her ears and making that popping sound on her ear drums. Scott’s voice fell in with the flow of that sensation, his concerned question almost lost to her as she tried to battle away the feeling of complete incapacitation.  
When she could get her eyes to focus through the throbbing in her temples, she had to battle the embarrassment that slapped her in the face when she saw that all the mutants surrounding her on Cerebro’s walkway were still standing. Yet she was horizontal with her face bruised from the fall.  
A pair of strong but tender hands wrapped around her arms and lifted her carefully to her feet, planting her very solidly back where she should be. The unsteady swaying that followed was quelled by the arm that wrapped around her shoulders. Jean Grey allowed herself to lean against his solid chest, using his weight to prop herself up.   
“Are you OK?” Scott asked again as she bunched his black cashmere jumper up in her fist, trying to grasp the one real thing directly beside her.  
“What the hell was that?” she gasped.  
“That was one hell of a gnarly ride!” Ultra exclaimed, tentatively pulling off the cerebral interface and running a hand through her hair. “Seriously, you could get drunk off the power of this thing.” She cast an admiring eye around the dome-shaped room as if she had just learned its worth.  
“Did you find him?” Scott barked. Even though his eyes were shielded by the ever-present quartz lens shades, Jean could see the anger in them. It shone far brighter than his optic blasts. She warmed anew to his sudden protectiveness, even though she had seen it many times. It was nice that despite Ultra turning everything upside down, at least something remained unchanged.  
The sadistic grin on Ultra’s face stilled Jean’s heart, even though it pounded incessantly in her ears. “Oh yes,” she replied, the atmosphere around her crackling with energy. Ultra very deliberately traced a finger across the curved dome of the cerebral interface. Jean could sense her temptation to take Cerebro for another test drive despite the dire situation that they were facing. She wished that she could say from experience that one could get drunk off the power the machine granted but her dalliances with the Professor’s creation were significantly different. There was a reason why Charles had been the only one able to operate it; his abilities were so far advanced that he possessed a level of mental control that a novice like Jean could only aspire to. Evidently Ultra not only possessed the control to operate the machine, but could push it far beyond its ordinary capacity. Far beyond, even, what Charles could do.  
As her mind cleared and she felt her sense of inner self return, Jean remembered the surge of pure power that Ultra had summoned. It had been far too simple for Ultra to hijack Cerebro’s system and input parameters that allowed her to use it as a computer mainframe. She had used it to do what she had been unable to before; to track the source of the psychic burst that had temporarily incapacitated her. Her location powers had been knocked out of line by the blast and even though they had come back ‘on line’ shortly after she had recovered, all traces of the Professor’s transmission had faded. However she had used Cerebro’s mass of sensors and filters to track the energy to its source. Then she had triangulated a possible location based on statistically significant magnetic disturbances. She had made it sound and look so easy. They were all surprised to learn that the Professor was being held locally. Then she had made a bold move; she had pushed harder. The psychic energy that she had used should have been enough to kill everyone at her target, including Charles, but Jean had sensed the tiniest measure of control in the seemingly reckless exhibition of power. Instead of wiping everyone out, Ultra had knocked all but a few unconscious. Unwittingly, Jean had connected with their minds a fraction of a second before she, too, had blacked out. There were at least forty mutants in the complex, all of whom with varying levels of competency. Then she had glimpsed two very familiar minds, one of whom was Charles and the other...  
“He’s being held a few miles from here. Magneto has him.”  
A rumble of concern spread through the ranks as the sudden weight of their mission fell on them. They had all suspected that Eric was responsible for the kidnapping but the confirmation of it presented an even greater problem.  
“So what’s the plan?” Rogue asked, her southern-belle twang trembling slightly. “Every time we go up against Magneto we lose.”  
Jean was disturbed by the fact that the grin didn’t melt from Ultra’s face.  
“The plan is the same as when I escaped...we walk through the front door.”  
“Be serious,” Scott snapped, his body contracting against the suggestion. “We can’t just walk in, grab the Professor and walk out again without thinking about the numbers we’ll be up against.”  
“OK,” Ultra said, folding her arms across her chest. “Your precious Professor is being held at 417 West 48th Street on a small, disused industrial estate right in the ironworks area of town, therefore giving Magneto plenty of magnetic fields to screw around with. The building is a three-storey factory complex and Charles is being held on the second floor behind the seventh door on the right. Considering the size of the building, Magneto’s team is precisely forty-three mutants strong which is a sizeable contingency to be facing off against. Their abilities register on the ‘barely competent’ scale so our main problem is going to be their sheer numbers rather than their powers. We are going to split into three teams and hold off the enemy so that the Professor can be recovered safely and extracted. We all know that this could be a kamikaze mission, which is why I would normally suggest going in alone but I am painfully aware that the X-Men don’t do that sort of thing so I’m not even going to fight you on it.”  
Scott and Ultra regarded one another for a moment, as if he was appraising her assessment. Eventually he took a slow, deep breath and nodded. “Suit up everyone. We leave in five.”

   
With Storm at the controls and with the powerful engines shrieking vehemently, the X-Jet circled the location on 48th Street. Ultra unclipped the safety belt and picked her way up to the cock pit. With one hand on the back of the pilot’s chair, she stared out of the window. She could feel the baited breath of everyone around her as they waited for instructions.   
“Bring up your navigation overlay,” she commanded. Storm flipped a couple of switches and laser lines appeared on the transparent surface, isolating each building with a readout of their exact address.   
From the air, it was impossible to make one building out from the other. Every roof looked the same and as the jet banked away from their target once more, the brief view of the road system below was lost.   
“If we make many more passes we’ll be spotted,” Scott said from the seat behind the co-pilot.  
“Bank again and give me one last visual with an infra-red filter. Show me the heat signatures of everyone inside.”  
“Couldn’t you use your powers for that?” Jean asked with the tiniest hint of snarkiness in her voice.  
Ultra had to shackle the urge to punch that pretty face of hers. Even an incompetent telekinetic might have their uses. “And risk alerting the enemy that we’re here?”  
“I think it might be too late for that,” Logan interjected and pointed out the window.  
As the jet came about again, the building came into view. This time it was easy to pick it out from the crowd; while the rooftop had been deserted before, now there was a single dark figure stood in the centre with arms raised.   
“Well that can’t be good,” Bobby Drake muttered as the fuselage suddenly began to quake and buckle around them.   
The jet was rammed by an invisible force that buckled the nose cone, forcing the metal in on itself. With nothing but propulsion to keep it steady, the aircraft jumped backwards several feet. Ultra slammed against the cockpit controls, wincing as the dials dug into her torso. The next time she turned her gaze out the window, she could see the rippling threads of the invisible force that was manipulating the jet. With a slow, deep intake of breath, she created a counterforce that shredded the magnetic fields.   
“It’s Magneto,” she choked through gritted teeth as she pushed a psyonic blast towards the figure. It negated the new fields that he was trying to create and blasted him off his feet so hard that he almost toppled from the rooftop. “Find us a place to land.”  
No sooner had she barked the command, an explosion crippled the jet, tearing through the metal and filling the belly with acrid black smoke.   
“What the hell was that?” Jean Grey screamed over the sputtering engines just as another explosion sheared off their right wing.  
Everyone scrambled out of their chairs, pulling parachute packs from beneath their seats.  
“Set us down somewhere!” Ultra yelled as she cast a protective field around the crippled aircraft. “Straddle the buildings if you have to just get us out of the air!”  
Storm didn’t have to be told twice. With what little power she had remaining in the engines, she navigated them to a rooftop that was large enough to hold them and cut the thrusters. With a bang that knocked everyone off their feet, the jet landed and the wheezing structure finally came to a rest.  
“Textbook, Storm,” Ultra muttered past the bruised ribs. She felt Logan’s hand on her arm pulling her up.  
“So much for a stealth approach,” Scott said as he adjusted his visor.  
“Nothing about this mission is stealthy,” Ultra replied. “Magneto knew we were coming long before he saw the jet. This is going to be a dog fight so you had all better be ready.”  
“We’re sitting ducks here,” Logan said, half-shielded by the mangled metal as he peered out to check their surroundings. “We need to get to a more secure position.” He took great, long sniffs at the air, his nostrils flaring as he tried to detect whether anyone was approaching. “We need to head about six blocks south.”  
“Pair off people,” Ultra commanded. “I want Bobby with Rogue, Scott with Jean, and Storm with Kurt. Don’t let personal feelings cloud your judgement. You’re all paired off because one of you has a projectile power while the other doesn’t.”  
“I’ll cover you,” Logan said, jerking his head round to face her when she didn’t announce her own pair.  
“I’ll work better alone,” Ultra tried to protest but Logan’s eyes narrowed determinedly.  
“I said I’ll cover you,” he growled. “You stay behind me.” He pointed one gloved index finger at her, his face set in an expression that proved that he wouldn’t be moved by any argument. Rather than waste valuable time forcing her point, Ultra simply nodded once and conceded that, for the first time, she would hide behind another.  
Suddenly she felt a hand wrap around her shoulder. She turned abruptly to see Scott looking at her from behind his visor. “Magneto wants you,” he said in a voice that was a little too tender for her liking. “We’ll all cover you.”  
A great swell of emotion rose within her as she sensed the sincerity that probably shone from his eyes. He sounded an awful lot like the Professor when he spoke like that so it was no wonder that Charles thought of Scott as the leader of the mutant team. He also reminded her of Low, which was why she swallowed hard against the lump in her throat and banished all feelings that could compromise her judgement. Now was not the time to soften. Now was the time for diamond skin and razor-sharp focus.  
“We’re clear to move out,” Logan said and jerked a finger at Bobby. “Find us a way down.”  
“No problem,” the kid replied, the ice that he commanded bleeding across his skin as he embraced the full scope of his abilities. He thrust his arms forwards, freezing the moisture in the air so that it created a helter-skelter slide down the side of the building. He and Rogue led the way with Logan close behind. Ultra followed in fourth place, her heels carving deep channels into the ice as she free-fell down the eleven-storey tower of bricks and glass. As the others followed behind, Ultra considered how she could have very easily mimicked everyone’s abilities and become a one-woman army. But then she felt the miniscule hairs that covered her body all stand on-end at once, and it wasn’t because of their ice slide. An almost inaudible voice seemed to whisper in her ear, warning her against using her abilities. Then she caught herself looking over her shoulder, not because she wanted to check that everyone was in formation but because she sensed that she was being watched. Someone, probably from Magneto’s Brotherhood, was trying to locate her somehow. Even though he knew that she was coming, Ultra wanted to stay off his radar until the last possible second.  
On the street below Logan took the lead position, this time with Storm and Jean at his sides. Ultra slotted into formation behind him, her senses sharp. She could hear the rats scuttling about in the abandoned buildings that surrounded them and she detected some very distant voices of possibly vagrants who had taken up shelter, but otherwise the streets were deserted. Their emergency landing didn’t seem to have attracted any attention yet which at least meant that they wouldn’t have to deal with any police for a while. Cops would just over-complicate the situation, as well as highlighting their exact position to Magneto.  
The one thing that Ultra was surprised about was the fact that he hadn’t deployed any of his Brotherhood to intercept the X-Men before they got too close to his stronghold. The fact only served to intensify the adrenaline surge that made her body feel like it was vibrating around her bones.   
Their progress was slow but steady as Logan halted their group to check every intersection, his keen sense of smell being the first recon tool in his arsenal. Then he would check around by sight and then he would signal the team forwards. It was almost enough to make one feel complacent but then he stopped them at the bottom of an alley that looked on to their target.  
“Plan?” he prompted as they all checked the boarded up lower windows and the bricked-over doorway.  
It looked so tame compared to what they had all expected to find. Unable to get a good view around Logan’s broad shoulders, Ultra stepped out so that she could see the entire front face of the building. Suddenly burning pain exploded in her shoulder and she stumbled back into the shadows of the alley. Stunned and with a trembling hand, she examined the scorched fabric and third degree burn.  
Her team contracted around her, shielding her while she recovered, but that was when the barrage began. Wooden quills arced down onto their location, ricocheting off the brick walls around them. Logan unsheathed his claws and deflected most of them while Scott and Jean launched their own defence, blasting them out of the sky. Ultra used the moment of distraction to try and locate their source, triangulating the trajectory to one of the smashed upper level windows.  
“We’re gonna get pinned if we stay here!” Scott shouted over Logan’s effort-fuelled grunts. “We need to move!”  
“Leave that to me,” Ultra muttered, her shoulder almost fully healed.  
Brotherhood mutants were beginning to converge on their location, whooping and hollering with triumph as they saw the X-Men trapped in their narrow alleyway. The fact that they had appeared from round one of the corners of the building meant that there was an entrance somewhere off to the side that could prove useful.   
“On the count of five we move,” she said. “One...two...”  
With a loud clap, Ultra slammed her hands together and then pulled them apart as if she was stretching a cord between them. The air between her palms rippled and cracked and then she let the pulse fly with a burst of psychic energy. It radiated outwards, smashing all windows that still held glass and sending their opponents reeling head over heels back the way they had come, all of them screaming in agony.  
“Storm and Kurt, enter via the roof,” Ultra commanded. “I don’t care if you have to make your own door, just get inside. The rest of us will split up and move from the ground up. Let’s go.”  
Kurt instantly disappeared, a small puff of smoke the only trace left behind, while Storm conjured a concentrated cyclone of wind that lifted her off the ground. Bobby led Rogue out first, his palms up in defence. They knew exactly where they were heading. As Logan made to follow, Ultra reached down and swept one of the misaimed quills into her fist. Taking aim at one of the windows, she let it fly. It disappeared from sight, as fast as a bullet, but it found its home in someone’s chest. The pained yelp and crash from inside the building signified that they had one less opponent to worry about.   
“Are there anymore watching us up there?” Scott asked as they made their move, crossing the deserted road.  
Ultra shook her head. “No. He’s the flame-thrower that dropped the jet.” She pointed at one of the mutants that had suffered from her pulse. His head was shorn almost bald but a dark smattering of five-o’clock-shadow remained. He wore a sleeveless vest that showed off the intricate tattoos down both arms that culminated in charcoal grey hands with skin like thick, cracked lava rocks.  
“Are they dead?” Jean whispered as they passed the lifeless forms.  
“What do you think?” Ultra snapped.  
The sharp intake of breath meant that Jean didn’t approve. “We aren’t supposed to be killing people!”  
“We’re tit-deep in trouble and you’re concerned about my methods?” Ultra growled. “Kill or be killed, Jean. This isn’t a Danger Room simulation, this is real. This test was designed to hurt.”  
Jean was about to argue further but Scott silenced her with a raised hand. Their team rounded the corner of the building and slipped down the street that separated it from its neighbour. Rogue and Bobby waited on the far side of the entrance. Bobby mouthed the words ‘loading bay’.  
With a hand on his shoulder to hold him back, Ultra took the lead from her brother. Both shutters were up and the loading bay seemed to be deserted. There were about twenty feet between them and the stairs that led up into the building with a long ledge on the other side where the old warehouse staff would probably have handled deliveries, loading and off-loading trucks.   
“Let’s go,” Logan said and surged forwards.  
“No!” Ultra whispered, grabbing him and pulling him back to cover. He glared at her with a questioning frown. She fixed her eyes on him and then tracked her gaze slowly up into the corner of the roof directly above where Bobby and Rogue were poised. Lurking like a black widow spider was a Brotherhood mutant, his skin mottled and discoloured like the filthy bricks that he rested against. His eyes were closed for the moment and Ultra could sense him listening carefully for their approach. After all, if there was one thing that she had learned over the years it was that a mutant could camouflage his appearance but never his eyes. She turned to Scott and signed what she wanted him to do. With a brief nod, he reached up to his visor and let a single blast fly. It struck the mutant in the leg. He let out a cry of pain and slipped from his perch, his camouflage failing so that his true appearance was revealed. Then Logan sprang into action, leaping across the divide between them and stabbing his claws into the man’s chest. The mutant convulsed for a moment and then relaxed as the life left him.  
With an agonised shriek, the next Brotherhood guard exploded into action. She rushed at Logan with a metal baton, swinging it erratically at his head. He saw every blow before it happened and evaded her efforts before Scott neutralised her with a blast to the chest.  
They breached the loading bay within a few seconds. As they proceeded through the main corridor that led inside, they passed windows that looked into abandoned offices. Rotting old desks and dilapidated chairs were overturned while a thin covering of faded papers littered the floor. One of the windows had even been put through, roughly drawn graffiti lines spray painted on the walls inside. Ultra led the way past them all, her nose full of the musty scent of decay and abandonment. A newer, stronger odour of warm, exerting bodies enticed her forwards. The smell rose above the aged aroma of the building around her, far younger than the must and deeply foreboding. Even the building rejected the idea of intrusion. Like her, it wanted to be left alone to just be.  
At the end of the corridor was a mangled set of metal roller shutters. The outline of them was still securely locked down over the entrance to what must have once been the factory level, but the centre had been blown out. Ultra traced her fingers over the scorch marks, the tips coming away grimy. She rubbed her thumb and index finger together thoughtfully as she calculated the blast radius. Hopefully the mutant lying dead outside had caused this damage, otherwise they were about to face off against another explosive opponent.  
Tall metal shelving divided the cavernous space directly in front of her. The floor looked a similar no-man’s-land to the offices behind them with old boxes and papers strewn about. A couple of large, probably broken, pieces of machinery stood about twenty metres to her left which could provide a small amount of cover in the event of an attack. Other than that, the factory level was huge with no proper cover for a stealth approach. Once her team broke the cover of the doorway they would be painfully vulnerable as they crossed to either stairway situated at both ends of the space. The first stairway to the left stood at a thirty-feet distance whereas the one to the right was just ten feet away. From what Ultra could remember of her psychic encounter with the complex, the Professor was being held up the staircase to her left. It meant that she was going to be displaying her powers sooner than she had anticipated.  
With jerking hand gestures, Ultra communicated her new deployment plan to her teammates. Hopefully Storm and Kurt were making progress on breaching the building from above but she wasn’t confident. Nothing but silence surrounded them. She had to assume that they had been captured, the same as she had to assume that the mutants she was sending on without her were going to be too. If Magneto had orchestrated this whole debacle purely to test her limits then they were going to be picked off one by one until only she remained.  
Her first instinct was to pair Logan with Rogue and Bobby and position them on the factory floor. That way if the situation got too dire then either group could lead their opponents into an ambush where those adamantium claws could be put to surgical use. But as soon as Logan had gotten a sniff of her plans he had instantly protested.  
“I’m staying with you,” he growled in an undertone.  
“You’re more of an asset down here,” she replied.  
He had narrowed those fierce brown eyes at her, his expression set in a dark fashion. He flexed his knuckles as if he was barely holding on to his temper and then pointed a finger at her. “I’m...staying...with...you,” he hissed.  
Ultra rolled her eyes and heaved an exasperated sigh. This sentimentality on Wolverine’s part was going to have to be addressed when all this was over. It was fine to be lovey-dovey brother and sister when they were just hanging around the mansion, playing pool or drinking so much beer that they fell into a thoughtless sleep beside one another. But right here and now, in the throes of battle with a mutant that wasn’t so much of a threat to her but that could knock the X-Men squarely on their asses, was not the time to let sentimentality cloud judgement. And his judgement was about as foggy as it came.  
“Fine!” Ultra snapped and redeployed the teams, hoping that Bobby and Rogue would be OK holding down the fort on their own while Scott and Jean played at recon upstairs. “You and me that way.” She pointed to the staircase off to the left and started to make her way forwards. Logan fell into step behind her while everyone else carried out her orders. “Cover us!” she hissed at Bobby who nodded once. “You may need to power up, little girl.”  
Rogue’s face turned ashen. “I can’t!” she whispered, her mouth gaping. “What if...?”  
Logan ploughed on ahead, ducking beneath the staircase to take cover. There was movement up above but Ultra turned back, keeping low against the wall. She heard Logan growl a protest but she ignored him. By the time she reached Rogue, the girl was trembling and shaking her head, the brunette ponytail lapping about her ears.   
Ultra knew the source of the girl’s fears. Her absorption ability was unpredictable; she couldn’t control exactly what she took from another person, be it mutant ability or human thought. Once the channel was opened, all she could do was leech everything without discrimination and that often led to a certain contamination of her own personality. Ultra had heard Logan’s account of the girl’s troubles, especially after her own dalliance with Rogue’s absorption. Taking on that much power had almost consumed her completely so it wasn’t surprising that Rogue felt fearful of the prospect of touching someone again.  
Fighting her natural impulses, Ultra took the girl’s gloved hands in her own and fixed her with a steady gaze. “Rogue, nothing will happen from a few-second touch. You’ve got this.”  
“But the noise,” she whispered, her voice quivering. “The noise in my head. I can hardly stand it.”  
“I can help you. I can help you erase them and train you to never have to put up with the invasion again. But right now you need to get some power behind you. I’d offer my hand but the power is too much for you. You need to be able to protect yourself and your team. Scott and Jean may need cover fire.”  
Rogue’s breathing steadied as she considered the notion that Ultra could help her. Her eyes, previously darting this way and that unseeing, now focussed on the stoic green ones before her. With a few deep breaths, her shaking head gestures turned to nods as Bobby looked on, a proud smile playing at the corners of his mouth. She turned to him, tentatively peeling off her glove.  
“When we get back, I promise I’ll work with you to help you get some control over this,” Ultra said as Bobby and Rogue came skin-to-skin. There was a kind of tragic irony in the fact that the boyfriend and girlfriend couldn’t touch at all, testing everything that a standard relationship involved. No kisses, no bare-skin cuddles and certainly no intimacy. How could it be possible to maintain a relationship based on feelings alone with no validation? The tragedy was amplified when both their eyes flared at the contact, not just because Rogue’s absorption started its destructive work but because the contact was so alien to them both. It awoke sentimental feelings in Ultra that she battled so hard to keep buried. It made her all the more determined to help Rogue, if only to spare her from being a virgin forever.  
With a two-pronged cover team firmly established, Ultra made her way back to Logan. She ignored the subtle smirk on his face so that she wasn’t tempted to slap it. It didn’t take a genius to realise that she was headed for a big told-you-so song and dance when they got back to the institute. That would come later. Now to the task at hand.  
With silent footsteps, Logan led the way up the metal staircase and paused before the door at the top. He passed a glance across an old, burned out digital keypad that would once upon a time have restricted entry but was now a sorry reminder of what the building used to be. Ultra was about to follow him through the door when the hairs on the nape of her neck all stood on end, teased upright as if by a hand. She knew that there was no one behind her but still she turned very, very slowly, pivoting on the balls of her feet silently. Scott and Jean had already passed through the door over the opposite side and were probably searching the corridors. Bobby and Rogue were debating between themselves about who was going to watch which end of the room, their lips moving frantically with no sound carrying. Ultra watched Rogue slip from the safety of their cover and creep over to a better vantage point where she could guard the foot of the opposite staircase while Bobby turned his gaze on the other.   
It was Rogue’s shifting shadow that triggered an alarm bell in Ultra’s head. As the tiny amount of light in the room was disturbed, shadows were cast differently. It was then that she glimpsed a dark figure crouched low twenty metres from Bobby’s position. She was about to act when her eyes filtered into her more acute night-vision and then she saw the rest of them; eight bodies all distributed amongst the cover zones. Brotherhood mutants.  
She should have signalled Logan. She should even have signalled the ground team below. But as she watched the seemingly frozen bodies below, sensing their intent, Ultra felt something ignite deep within her soul. The burning sensation bubbled right from her core until every nanometre of her body was tingling. The rage took over her mind as she stared at the unfair match below and the iron-like grip she had on her mental control frayed and snapped as if it was made of twine. Incensed by the injustice of the whole situation – Charles’ needless kidnapping and Magneto’s sadistic test at the hands of his mindless minions – she felt herself disappear into a sinkhole, her eyes trapped in a trance that connected her to every enemy mind below her. She didn’t think about the consequences. She didn’t think about anything at all. All that consumed her was rage, pure and white-hot. Her mind pulled on theirs and twisted the fabric of their beings, like ‘Indian burns’ between schoolchildren. Then she reached for their souls and began to saw them in half.  
Ultra was almost completely dissociated from her body, her mind murderously focussed on the swirling channel before her. She almost didn’t feel the trembling of her shoulders, but then it wasn’t trembling at all. She felt the pressure from two hands gripping her tightly. Her vision slipped in and out of focus as her head began to shake and then someone slipped into sight directly in front of her. Two eyes filled her visual field before suddenly she felt her consciousness being sucked back into her body. With a gasp, she felt her energy suddenly leave her like a tsunami wave and she sagged against Logan.  
“What the hell was that?” he asked, fighting to hold her upright.  
“I have no idea,” she whispered. Her tongue felt like it didn’t quite belong to her. “I just lost control when I saw them.”  
Bobby and Rogue inspected the open grave below, checking to see if there were any survivors. The faint aroma of blood in the air indicated some shattered skulls amongst the corpses.  
Then she realised her mistake, more grievous than the telepathic murder she had just committed. She could practically smell the wave of triumph in the air. She had given Magneto exactly what he had wanted.  
“Shit,” she whispered. “He knows where we are.”  
As if in response, the door beside Logan exploded off its hinges in a rain of splinters. A Brotherhood mutant charged through with a feral roar, not stopping as he collided with Logan. With a muffled slamming of two muscular bodies, they toppled over the balcony.  
“Logan!” Ultra shrieked, swinging herself over the metal railing. Silky white wings burst from her back as she free-fell alongside them, guiding her towards her brother. She stretched out to try and grab him but before she could reach him she felt herself get sucked into a portal.  
The world turned backwards and inside-out, making it impossible for her to judge her position in space. All she could feel was a thick, male arm around her neck. In an almighty rush, the air that had been sucked from her lungs returned with a slam in the face. The arm released her and she tumbled to a very hard landing. She lay there for more than a few seconds, drawing breath into the chest that had been winded from the fall. The smell around her was different and there was a noticeable draught in this room. She could sense people standing all around her and counted five pairs of boots through the dishevelled feathers on her wings. There could easily have been many more.  
“So this is the famous Level Seven,” a heavily accented voice said, permeated by footsteps pacing around her prostrate form. “You have no idea how difficult it has been to wait for your location to be revealed.”  
“If you were that interested in me, why didn’t you snatch me from the jet when you knew I was there?” Ultra gasped, rolling over onto her back so that she could get a better look at her surroundings. Another hanger only this one was empty and she sensed that she might not even be in the same building as her team. The smell here was completely different; less musty.  
“Too many around you. Too much protection.” The accented voice came from a red-skinned creature with coiffed black hair and a waving devil’s tail behind him. She frowned at the beautifully tailored suit and wondered why a classy guy like him was playing lap-dog to Magneto. “Now you are alone.”  
“I highly doubt that,” Ultra said with a little chuckle. There were twelve mutants around her altogether, including the cheap Satan Halloween costume. Four pyrotechnics, one water, one earth, three combats with heightened strength, two speedies and one teleporter that happened to be the Satan-wannabe. She was moderately impressed at his Level Five status, but his minion army were eleven of the most inept Level Threes she had ever encountered.   
Coughing more for effect than for any real necessity, Ultra vary laboriously rolled onto all-fours. The ground was a solid concrete sheet with soft Mother Earth nine feet below. That was nine feet of damage just waiting to happen.  
“Oh, I would like you to be assured that you are very alone,” Satan replied with a smirk, his yellow eyes narrowing. “Your friends are being kept very well occupied.”  
With a groan, Ultra pushed herself up into a slightly wobbly stance, her right fist closing around the handful of dust that she had scraped up with her. The teleporter was her biggest threat so she would have to get creative and figure out a way to cut him down.  
“So should I feel impressed that Magneto has gone to all this effort just to learn about me?” she asked, eyeing each of the teleporter’s minions in turn. Their eyes were all hungry for the attack and a couple of them were a heartbeat away from breaking team and going for her throat.  
“You should be afraid because the next step is for us to cut you up and find out what colour your insides are.”  
Ultra snorted a laugh. “Do you honestly expect me to believe that he wants me dissected? I could replace every single one of you and make him the most powerful mutant terrorist in the world. He doesn’t want me dead at all.”  
“You think very highly of yourself,” Satan replied with a snarl, stepping closer to her.  
“Let’s just say that I am self-confident, bordering on the arrogant.”  
“Then I shall have to knock you down a peg or two.” He was now within arm’s reach.  
“Actually, it’s me that will be teaching you a thing or two,” she replied with a lopsided smirk. Willing the dust to metamorphose, she threw the whole fistful into Satan’s face, the acid that she had turned it into scalding his skin and eyes. Howling like a dying banshee, he fell nursing his face. “Try teleporting now.”  
The rest of the band began to surge forwards, yelling and whooping like they had even the tiniest chance against her. Mother Earth answered her call, the ground rumbling with a concentrated earthquake that set the building groaning around them.   
“In for a penny,” she said to herself as she floated off the ground. “In for a pound.”  
As she rose in the air like an angel from Hell, she raised her arms and released an electromagnetic pulse that fried every electrical circuit that was thrumming through the building, fuelling a network of security cameras situated to capture her every move. Then she flicked her fingers at the ripples of draught in the air and whipped them into a swirling tornado that sucked the mutants up into the current. It blew the roof off the building and jumped skyward, taking her opponents with it. The distant screams of the dying were almost lost on the back of the earthquake that shuddered to a halt.  
Ultra glanced below as her wings carried her back down to the cracked, uneven concrete. Red-skin was still howling in agony, his arms up around his face to try and protect himself from a foe that he could no longer see. She squatted in front of him and gripped his throat, lifting him clean off the floor, and pinned him to the wall.  
“So, you said something about knocking me down a peg or two,” she said with a sadistic grin. His hands clawed at her fist in a vain attempt to get her to loosen her grip but she simply squeezed all the tighter, wringing the worthless life from his bones. “The only reason that I’ll spare your life is so that you can crawl back to your spineless master and tell him exactly who he is dealing with. And he’d better not have hurt a single cell on Charles Xavier’s body, or I’ll come after you.” Ultra opened her grip and let the mewling mutant fall in a crumpled heap, that expensive suit dusty and less impressive now. “I would say if he’d hurt a hair on his head but the old fool is bald.” She chuckled at her own joke and backed off a few steps. “Until next time.” With that, she teleported away, reappearing in the corridor that Logan had hurried down only a few minutes ago. His scent was still thick in the air, along with his worry. The only thing that concerned Ultra was the fact that she couldn’t feel where he was. She couldn’t feel anyone.  
Settling her nerves, she strode down the centre of the walkway, passing similar offices to the ones downstairs. There was evidence of squatters, very human but now long gone. She just reached the blind corner when she felt a great pressure in the air. Before she could raise a defence she was knocked off her feet by an explosive pulse. The air crackled with the invisible force as she skidded a little on the industrial carpet. Ultra could do little but let her head loll to the side, her thoughts scattered. It took all her effort to figure out how to move again, her limbs feeling heavy and uncoordinated. Then she tried to summon a protective field. Her mind stalled like a car engine. A dull, thudding headache erupted in her temples as she raised herself to a shaky stand. Through the haze in her mind Ultra realised something and smiled. Magneto had knocked her adaptability completely off-line.  
“Now that could be handy!” she said to herself, genuinely impressed. “I’m going to have to remember that.”  
Suddenly a hard body slammed into her and knocked her off her feet all over again. The force sent her careening forwards and she crashed hard into the wall. She was about to push off and come face-to-face with her attacker but an open fist shoved her head further into the wall, the bones of her skull protesting against the agonising pressure.  
“So you’re the one that’s got the boss all hot under the collar.”   
Ultra didn’t recognise the man from his voice but registered the strong Louisiana twang. “Oh, I’m nobody special,” she gasped, wincing as he pushed the weight of his body onto her, crushing her torso as well as her head.  
“Although I have to say, I agree with the hot under the collar part,” he whispered, his lips grazing her ear. Then he stepped back and hauled her into the air, launching her down the corridor. She landed heavily, the skid giving her carpet burns across her exposed skin. “You’re all kinds of fine, cherie.”  
Ultra registered his footsteps rapidly approaching her and rolled over, vaulting to her feet. She tested the air around her to try and bring out some power but her brain was still shorting out. Thankfully she had a whole other arsenal to call upon.  
“You’re not so bad yourself,” she said. Her opponent was pretty good-looking beneath that weird headdress. Like a carrot-top, his beautiful chocolate-brown hair sprouted on top of his head. His eyes were entrancing; scarlet red irises and blacked-out sclera. He carried himself with an air of confidence that came from power. This guy knew that he could get out of any situation. Ultra smirked to herself, planning on teaching him that he had just met a woman he couldn’t handle.  
“Such a shame that the boss wants us to put you through hell. I’d like to put you through something very different,” he said with a cocky smirk, pulling a small baton out of his pocket. “Let’s go boys!”  
The doors around them opened and Brotherhood mutants spilled out into the corridor, surrounding Ultra on all sides. Without her abilities, she couldn’t tell exactly what they could do but if they were anything like her last opponents they’d be easy to dispatch. It would just take her a little longer this time.  
“You should have brought some more guys,” she said, bringing her fists up.  
“Just give up cherie. The tough-ass act doesn’t work on me. After all, what are you without your powers?”  
Ultra’s eyes narrowed and her grin broadened. “I don’t need powers,” she growled. “In fact, I’m more dangerous without them.”  
With a feral snarl, she lunged at the closest man on her right. She yanked him in front of her as a human shield just as another one fired energy bolts from his hands. Her shield howled in agony, the stench of charred flesh wafting up from his chest. Concealed from view, she released a single adamantium claw and stabbed him through the spinal cord then somersaulted backwards over the mutants converging on her from behind, kicking her shield as she flipped her feet over her head.   
Four pairs of confused eyes turned to face her as she leapt into the air, her right leg kicking out in a perfectly formed arc that caught one in the face. As he went down, she twisted her spin the other 180˚ and kicked the next one. She landed gracefully and lunged forwards with her hands, releasing her full set of claws into both chests simultaneously. This time she kept them on show, blood dripping from the blades as she brandished them.  
Three run-of-the-mill Brotherhood men stared dumbfounded at her while the Louisiana honey leaned against the wall, arms folded across his chest. Those strange eyes of his flared at the claws but he wasn’t all that surprised. The others, however, were trembling as they surveyed the carnage.  
“Don’t just stand there boys, have at it,” he said, waving a hand in her direction.  
“You’re just going to send them to the executioner without a care?” Ultra scoffed.  
“They either follow orders or they’ll have me to answer to.”  
After exchanging a nervous glance between them, the men moved a couple of steps forward, hands raised in a half-assed defence.   
“Sorry boys, I tried,” she said as she sliced with her claws again. First each of their hands fell to the floor and then their headless bodies followed. “So am I going to learn your name before I kill you?”  
“The name’s Gambit,” he said, the grin never wavering. “And I’m not here to die. It was nice meeting you cherie. Your man’s through that door.” He pointed a finger behind her but she didn’t get the chance to follow the gesture. With lightning fast movements, Gambit reached into the folds of his coat and threw a smoke bomb on the ground. Within seconds the corridor was flooded with thick, acrid smoke that choked the air from Ultra’s lungs. She collapsed to the floor with one arm raised in defence but the expected attack never came. When the smoke cleared, Gambit was gone. She walked back to the corner and peered round to the main doorway but there was no sign of him, not even when she glanced out the window. He had simply vanished.  
From the view of the street below, Ultra could see that the area was completely deserted, just as it had been when she and her team had arrived. For a moment she forgot that she had to find the Professor. She even forgot that she was probably going to have to liberate her team considering all her backup had disappeared. Most disturbingly the missing head-count also included Logan. All she could think about was those black and red eyes, that beautifully lilting accent and the selfish agenda that had caused him to split on the big boss. There was, of course, the chance that Gambit had lied about the Professor’s location but then her brain finally came out of neutral. Her location ability whispered an affirmative in her ear; the third door to her right, directly behind her. She took a very slow, calculated breath and turned to face her final challenge.  
As her heels drilled into the worn carpet, she fired off a powerful psychic pulse that slammed into the minds of every Brotherhood mutant still standing in the facility. It told them, in very certain, finite terms, to get the hell out. The door behind which the Professor was being held suddenly opened and three mutants stepped out, leaving the way open for her as they left without a backward glance. They never even passed her a cursory once-over as they made for the exit.   
A part of her was glad that she was going to face Magneto completely alone. This whole exhibition had been about him learning more about her. Now he was going to get the unabridged version. Ultra erected a strong defensive field and peered round the doorframe.  
She didn’t perceive any distinguishing features of the makeshift cell. The only vision that flooded her mind was of Charles Xavier bound to a chair by a metal length around his wrists and chest. His head hung forwards, his breathing steady. Throughout the time it had taken to infiltrate the warehouse and gradually thin Magneto’s herd, Ultra had never allowed herself to think about the reason they were all here. She had lost herself to the adrenaline-fuelled clarity of battle. The nagging voices in her head had been placated with every attack she had forged and every life she had taken. Now, however, she was staring straight at the cold truth.  
It had been very easy to brush off the terror she had felt after Charles had bombarded her mind with his distress call. It had been even easier to ignore the tenor of his warning. Ultra knew that he had wanted his team to rescue him but on the condition that she stayed at home. There was no way she was going to allow that to happen. She had lost herself to her military training, pretending that her motivation was one of honour. The truth was that she had grown to care very deeply for the man in that chair. She didn’t know how to show it and she was very scared of those feelings but that was the truth. Charles had been nothing but decent to her, offering her the sanctuary that she had desperately needed. He had fed her, clothed her and tried to offer her guidance which she had coldly rebuked on many occasions. Logan knew her truth because she trusted him above all else. He had been through the same trials that she had, whether voluntarily or not. His memories had short circuited to protect him but they still shared the same experiences. They were siblings by the metal on their bones, running far deeper than something as fallible as blood. Charles, on the other hand, was different.  
Now Ultra was faced with the possibility of losing him. After all, if Magneto wanted to truly test her limits all he had to do was kill Charles. She knew that doing so would ignite such a cataclysmic force that could potentially destroy all earthly life. She could never admit that fact to anyone but to avoid the truth within her own head was a recipe for disaster. There was still the chance that she could lose him, even after coming this far. Slumped in that chair, Charles looked as if he was lost already.  
“Don’t be afraid, my dear,” a deep, English voice addressed her as she stepped halfway through the opening. “You are very welcome here.”  
Ultra’s eyes snapped to the right. He was shorter than she had imagined. He wore a very fitted black two-piece suit and a burgundy cape. Most of his face was obscured by a metal helmet that covered all but his lips, nose and eyes, but she could see a brief flash of white hair beneath. His smile was sinister but his light eyes glittered like he had won the most coveted prize of all. She took a few more steps inside, more confidently this time, and checked that her force field was fully reinforced.   
The atmosphere inside thrummed with power. Ultra could feel the invisible tendrils dancing across the outer edge of her barrier, probing as if trying to find a way in.   
“So, I understand that this whole debacle was purely for my benefit so let’s get down to it,” Ultra said. “You wanted me, now you have me.”  
“You’re English?” Magneto said, a fifty-fifty mix of surprised and impressed.  
“Yes, I’m English,” she scoffed in response, first folding her arms across her chest and then placing them on her hips. “At what stage in this encounter do we bargain for Charles’ release?”  
Magneto chuckled to himself but ignored her question, instead strolling quite leisurely around the room. “I must say that you demonstrated quite an array of power today, my dear. Most impressive.”  
“Life is a theatre.”  
“I am most interested in hearing about where you came from. The fact that you are so far from home leads me to believe that you are a runaway or an outcast or both.”  
“America is the land of milk and honey, so we are led to believe,” she replied tartly.  
“But we know different, don’t we?” Magneto said with a smirk. “We know that there is no land of tolerance and certainly no land of peace. We are the next evolution to the human condition yet they choose to hate and fear us rather than learn.”  
Ultra rolled her eyes. “Next you’re going to describe us as gods among men.” She was quickly growing tired of the conversation. Exactly why Charles and his X-Men were so afraid of this man she would never know.  
“We are,” Magneto snapped, fixing her with a stern glare. “Then there are those among us that reside even higher than gods. You are our future.”  
“Me? Are you serious?”  
“Quite serious, my dear. You represent the ultimate evolution; someone who possesses great power and has learned to control it. You are the one that could tip the balance of the war that is coming.”  
“It is a war of your own making,” Ultra said. “I may have been trained for war but I do not covet it. I have seen the price that comes from waging war, whether it is global or whether it is simply between factions. It is always high and there is never a winner.”  
“Sometimes war is necessary to forge a new future.”  
“Is this the part where you refuse to release Charles unless I join you?”  
Magneto surprised her by shaking his head. He waved a hand at the metal that tied Charles to the chair and they instantly loosened. He slithered to the floor, still unconscious. His chair was nearby so Magneto arranged him into a more dignified position. “Charles is free to go, regardless of your choice.”  
“You just took him to bring me out,” she snarled, even though she had known the answer all along. Even Charles had known it and that was why he had tried to warn her.  
“I knew that you would never meet me voluntarily. Charles would never have allowed it and his team would have tried to stop you.”  
“Where are they?”  
“They are quite safe,” he replied, the smirk back in place. “Compared to you, they fell faster than a house of cards. They are also free to go.”  
“I don’t understand this,” Ultra said.   
“Don’t be confused, my dear. I expected you to come alone. You are the type, after all. You are more used to acting off your own initiative and your own sweat, just like me. I expected you to blast my door down in the dead of night than to arrive with a team in tow. Your team are free to go provided they do not interfere. They can leave but you are coming with me.”  
“Never,” she growled.  
“I’m afraid I can’t take ‘no’ for an answer,” Magneto replied and flung a blast of energy at her. It ricocheted off her shield but still she crashed into the wall. He was far stronger than she had anticipated. “You are coming with me, my dear. Whether you want to or not.”   
Another pulse slammed into her, crushing the breath from her chest. The force of Magneto’s attack squeezed the shield tighter and tighter, creating such pressure that she couldn’t breathe. The power was incredible. The only option she had was to shatter the shield or she would die within minutes.  
With a cry of effort, Ultra dropped the shield. The pressure instantly disappeared and her energy failed. She fell to her knees, coughing and gasping for air. When the roaring faded from her ears she heard Magneto laughing.  
“Well, well, well,” he said. “What do we have here?” He flicked his hand upwards and Ultra felt him take hold of her whole body. Her adamantium claws exploded from her fingers with a life of their own, cracking the bones.  
“Don’t tell me you didn’t already know!” she gasped. “You should have sniffed it out the second I got within five miles of you!”  
“You underestimate your own capabilities,” he replied as the magnetic field he had conjured pinned her back to the wall. “You are very well protected. But that ends now.”   
Powerless against his field, Ultra was slammed against every wall in the room. Magneto flung her around like she was nothing but a rag doll. She felt her ribs fracture and then break as each hit took more of a toll. Then he flung her out into the corridor. Her head smashed against the wall. He released his hold and she dropped to the floor in a heap, her mind full of a foggy haze. It would have been so easy to pass out but there was no way of guessing where she would wake up.  
“There’s no way you would want to be allied with a mutant that is stronger than you,” she choked out, the words like metal ball-bearings in her mouth. “The second you felt I was slipping out of your control, you’d kill me.”  
A dull, rumbling chuckle reached her ears. “I’m starting to believe that you aren’t as powerful as I thought. Maybe Callisto was wrong in her analysis of you. To be felled so easily, you’re no Level Seven.”  
“Actually,” Ultra mumbled, drawing in a slow breath as she started to pick herself up. “You’ll find that I am.”  
The cauldron of rage that bubbled deep within her soul erupted. Magneto still had that self-assured smirk on his face as he conjured another magnetic pulse but this time, Ultra caught it in a double-handed fist and absorbed the energy. After all, adapt to survive. The energy soaked into every pore, empowering her. The more energy he threw at her, the stronger she got. It was only after his sixth failed attempt that the smile faded from his face.  
“Now it’s my turn,” she said, her voice distorted from all the power that she had absorbed. With a grunt of effort, she forced all the combined power out of her body in a concentrated blast that struck Magneto in the chest. His feet left the ground as he lost his balance but Ultra’s mind caught him mid-fall and held him aloft. The magnetic energy gathered around him but instead of him being able to draw on the power for himself, she used it to suck the power out. The old man writhed viciously against the efforts but to no avail. Every movement to try and escape drained his energy even more. Eventually he sagged forwards, barely conscious. She dissipated the containment field and allowed him to drop to the floor. With a grumble and a groan, Magneto fought to raise his head, his eyes full of fear.  
“Today you have felt only a hundredth of my power,” she said, her tone level and very threatening. “If you ever try and hurt my people again I will take you apart cell by cell until you are nothing more than a blight on the world. I’m tired of being hunted by people who want to use me for their own ends and I will defend against anyone that tries to use me again. Do we understand one another?”  
Instead of answering her, Magneto just marvelled. His eyes were glassy as if he was totally dazzled by her. “You really are a Level Seven,” he muttered.  
Ultra couldn’t help grinning. “You catch on quick.” With that, she waved her hands and Magneto disappeared. She delivered him back to earth ten miles away, far enough away so that he couldn’t try and start round two. A quick probe with her mind revealed where her team was being held. They were all conscious, thankfully, but bruised and a little humiliated from their defeat. With a smile, she projected a pulse of telekinesis that unlocked the doors that contained them. They burst out of their cells and instantly set to finding her and Charles.  
He was still unconscious when her mind returned. He looked withered and old, a pallor to his skin. The regal gentleman that he was seemed a far cry from the figure he cut now, slumped in the chair and his breathing shallow. Ultra tried to swallow the terror that threatened to consume her. She tried to focus solely on bringing him back but her mind was fractured, skipping over different ideas about how she could achieve it.   
Ultra raked her hands through her hair as hot tears stung her eyes. She could hear activity all around her as her people began their search. She had lived a life of selfishness for so long, especially during her time at Charles’ school, that she’d forgotten exactly what it felt like to care for someone else so deeply. Logan had been the first to weave his way into the fibre of her being. Her feelings for Low were romantic and therefore irrelevant. She had fooled herself into believing that Charles was nothing but a nameless, faceless sponsor of the safe little life she had begun to lead. In reality, he was so much more.  
Staring him in the face right now she felt exactly what every other member of his X-Men team felt; he was the centre of her world. She felt the roots anchor her feet as solidly to the ground as if she had suddenly metamorphosed into a decades-old sycamore tree. Wherever Charles Xavier was in the world, Ultra would be his shadow. Whoever wanted to bring harm to him, she would always be there to defend him.  
She stumbled forwards, trying to force movement from her almost alien feet. As if all the energy had drained from her body, she collapsed to her knees before him. The hot tears dripped down her cheeks as she took his face between both her palms. He was in there somewhere and she would find him.  
Charles, where are you? She whispered with her mind. Help me find you.  
It took all her remaining strength to ghost her mind into his. There was fog all around her with not even a flicker of light to guide her. Refusing to lose faith, she pushed on, even as her strength began to fail. The fight with Magneto had drained her more than she had thought. But the only thing that mattered was making sure there was something of this man to take home. Her search became more desperate as she felt the time pouring away. She wandered the stark corridors of his brain, chanting the same mantra over and over again; Come back to me.

   
Rogue stared into the swirling darkness of her eyelids. It was strange how even pitch blackness was never completely blinding. The tiniest fragment of light could change the whole experience, a flash of colour creating a kaleidoscope. She watched each curve as it moved, resisting the temptation to sway with the momentum.   
“You’re supposed to be meditating.”  
Rogue jumped at the sound of Ultra’s voice. For a second she had completely forgotten that she had company. “Sorry, I just can’t concentrate.”  
“That’s the problem,” that gentle English voice soothed. “Meditation isn’t about concentration, it’s about letting go your hold and embracing the unconscious.”  
“Yeah, that’s not really going to happen,” Rogue answered, flicking her eyes open and blinking against the dim light of the room. “The Professor tried all this before and it didn’t work.”  
Ultra heaved a sigh and uncrossed her legs, winding them to her right side. “Then let’s switch perspectives; how do you feel about your ability?”  
Rogue looked down at the floor. Did she even have to ask that question? Everyone knew how debilitating the absorption ability was. Every day Rogue had to watch uninhibited expressions of affection, from handshakes between colleagues to romantic embraces between lovers. She had to look in her own boyfriend’s eyes every day with that same burning beneath her skin and know that the urge was always going to be unfulfilled. No one could truly understand what that was like, not even the Ultimate Mutant.  
“Rogue?” Ultra prompted, her eyes wide and inquisitive.  
“I hate it.”  
“Hate is a very general term,” she replied. “Define your feelings better.”  
What better word was there to use? Rogue looked at her gloved hands, splayed against the floor as she braced her weight forwards. She couldn’t feel the thick pile carpet beneath her skin, or the ambient temperature of the room. She couldn’t rub dust into her fingers or feel the pure, silken texture of a flower petal. Despite the fact that she couldn’t hurt any of those things by touching them, she felt compelled to wear her gloves all the time in case she came upon something that she could hurt. It didn’t matter whether it was a dog, a cat, a bee or an ant underfoot. She was afraid of hurting anything that breathed.   
That was when the right word struck her.  
“I’m afraid.”  
Ultra smiled, her stern, serious features dissolving. It was strange how her face could change so completely from one moment to the next. She looked positively murderous when she was stern and focused but when she smiled she looked like the girl that she was. She looked happy if you didn’t look too closely at her eyes. They always gave away the fact that Ultra couldn’t feel true happiness.  
“Yes you are,” she said. “You allow your fear to control you and that is what we need to change. There is nothing wrong with your ability. Your ability can’t hurt you and eventually it won’t hurt others. The only thing that is wrong is the fact that you have grown to this age without getting some control over it.”  
“That’s easy for you to say,” Rogue snapped as her insides bubbled with anger. “You don’t have a single thing in the world to worry about. You can hold hands with or hug anyone you like. Hell, you can kiss someone you love and not run the risk of killing them.”  
Rogue was surprised that the smile didn’t leave Ultra’s face. “I wasn’t always like this,” she said, gesturing to her general person. “There was a time not that long ago when I was in worse shape than you. I walked with my eyes permanently on the floor because anything I looked at would set alight, turn to ice, turn to water, shred into hundreds of pieces or worse. Imagine what would happen if I looked at a person. Anything that popped into my head manifested as a power. What if someone annoyed me and I imagined them being sliced in two? It took a long time for me to get some control so that I could think straight again. It involved a great deal of solitude with only titbits of human contact for practise but I eventually did it. Do you know how I achieved it?” Rogue shrugged. “I experimented.”  
“What?”  
“The earliest manifestation of my control was what I now call Curiosity,” Ultra said, turning up her palm and summoning a fire. “What happens if I do this?” The fire raged into a three-foot tall column. “What happens if I do this?” The fire reduced back to its smaller form and then surged upwards before spitting out of an invisible chimney top. It resembled an erupting volcano. “What happens if I do this?” The column contracted again, this time into a small ball which she began to play catch with, bouncing it up and down from palm to palm. “What happens if I do this?” She wrapped her fingers around it like it was a ball and pitched it hard at the wall. It stopped and hovered only a few centimetres away from the fancy wood panelling. “What happens if I do this?” The fire ball gained life and darted around the room as if it was alive. “And then...” Ultra added and the fire ball exploded like a firework, sparks shooting off in all directions and dying before they hit the carpet. “All of this came from curiosity. What happens if? Have you ever asked yourself that question?”  
Rogue couldn’t hide the involuntary shudder that escaped her. “Only in terms of ‘what happens if I hurt someone I love’?”  
“Exactly!” Ultra exclaimed. “Your earliest attitude towards your powers was one of fear. You kissed your first boyfriend and he ended up in a coma. That is a pretty difficult situation to move on from, but you’ve changed since then. You’re aware of the nature of the power but now you need to take the next step.”  
“And how am I supposed to do that?” Rogue asked, feeling nothing but despair. What Ultra was asking of her was just too much. How could she possibly be proud of an ability that could hurt people? But then Ultra’s powers could hurt people couldn’t they?  
“You just have to trust me. I have experiences that the Professor doesn’t. You see, Curiosity is very dangerous in me. I have since learned that possibly my furthest limit is the manipulation of matter itself. I can bend matter completely to my will, further even than taking something apart with my mind. I can alchemise any substance by changing its molecular properties, literally turning water to wine and metal to gold. But in terms of people, I can do so much more. I can actually evolve and de-volve them. If I focus on a person or an animal too hard and with the right mind-set, I can actually evolve them further along the evolutionary chain or revert them back to the single-celled organism they came from. Conversely, if I don’t want to actualise the will I can see their evolutionary line. In some ways, I am a walking generational database because I can trace the lineage of anyone and anything. This is the ability that I have called Curiosity. It’s the one power that I don’t dabble with and the one that has the most potential for destruction. It makes your absorption ability look like a walk in the park.”  
Rogue gazed at Ultra with her mouth open, completely aghast. What she had just admitted...there were no words. Nothing could describe the feeling in her heart other than maybe Ultra knew what she was doing after all.   
“How did you control something so dangerous?”  
Ultra shrugged. “I had to discipline my mind so that it didn’t wander into Curiosity too easily. Every moment of every day I have to marshal my thoughts just in case there is a grain of Curiosity slipping through. Instead of allowing the power to be under subconscious control, I had to dig it up and bring it to a higher level. Only when you know it can you control it.”  
“So how can I know mine?” Rogue asked, swallowing hard.  
“You play,” Ultra replied with a wider grin. She held her hand out towards her with her palm up as if in a gesture of friendship. Rogue instantly recoiled. “That is a reaction that you need to learn to change. Physical contact is not a bad thing.”  
“No offence, but I’ve already tangled with your mind before and I don’t really want to repeat it.” Rogue remembered very little about her mergence with Ultra’s colossal psyche but the vibrations still resonated and Logan’s cautious glance remained etched in her brain. After all, what she had just learned about the Curiosity ability was enough to scare her away from even breathing the same oxygen as Ultra, let alone get touchy-feely.  
“There was a difference then,” Ultra replied in a level tone. “I hadn’t anticipated your ability and you took me by surprise. It was a reckless move trying to put me down that way. Had I known what you were going to do I would have braced the majority of my abilities so that you had an easier ride. This time I’m fully conscious and it’s consensual. That will make all the difference. You won’t absorb any of my personality, just a little power to whet your appetite.”  
“What power will I get?”  
“Whatever you want. That is the nature of my ability; whatever pops into your mind, you can create.”  
Completely trusting, Ultra kept her hand outstretched. Rogue scrutinised the deep lines on her palm and the indentations beneath her knuckles. It took her a long while before she began to peel off the velvet glove of her right hand.  
“Don’t be afraid, my friend,” Ultra murmured as Rogue inched towards her. “There is a difference between absorbing a mutant’s power and absorbing their life essence. You will learn to differentiate between the two and then skin-to-skin contact won’t be a problem anymore. Once you learn some restraint, you can banish your abilities back to the unconscious levels once again without fearing a lapse. This is only the beginning.”  
Gulping the saliva and bile that rose in her throat, Rogue almost couldn’t go through with it. For every centimetre’s gap she closed between their hands, she edged backwards six inches. She was constantly in two minds, wondering whether Ultra really knew what she was talking about, and the other really didn’t want to encounter that powerful mind again. But if this was going to bring her one step closer to being able to kiss her boyfriend, Rogue knew that she had to take a leap of faith.  
With a deep breath, she pushed forwards and locked fingers with the Ultimate Mutant.  
Wow.

   
There certainly were perks to being a Level Seven mutant with every conceivable ability ever catalogued, Ultra thought as she stirred the scrambled eggs in the pan while mentally turning over the bacon rashers and sausages that currently resided under the grill. Tomatoes charred on the griddle while baked beans bubbled in the pan next to the eggs, and that didn’t count the pancakes that kept jumping out of their pans like Mexican beans. Chocolate croissants baked happily in the ovens right next to a tin containing a rising loaf of bread.  
The kitchen was a hub of activity. It was only seven-thirty in the morning but already more than half of the institute’s students were milling around, grabbing plates and filling up on the various breakfast options that were already cooked. Storm, Scott and Jean oversaw the activity, supervising the kids and keeping them on task so that they weren’t late for their lessons but, of course, even they had their limits. Jimmy and Carlos, two second years, were fighting over the scrambled eggs, Carlos very loudly arguing that fried eggs were by far the best eggs ever served. Jimmy, however, piled his plate high with the scrambled while declaring at the top of his lungs that he would gladly make love to them if it was physical possible.   
Purely for the sake of something to do, Ultra picked up a wooden spoon and stirred something. Seconds later she had to duck as a pile of rocks flew at her head. They crashed into the stainless steel splash guard and scattered in every direction.  
“Hey!” she shrieked, whipping round to glare at the boys but they weren’t paying attention to her. “I’m cooking here!”  
Considering their declaration of eggy love, two plates lay discarded on the sideboard as the two boys started an epic power battle. Jimmy was the rock flinger, summoning streams of varying sized missiles which he flung at Carlos, who was a rather skilled ducker. Considering how busy the room had been moments before, the boys had completed cleared it in a few seconds as soon as war was declared. Poor Carlos had to resort to hiding behind a lap tray as Jimmy howled with laughter, throwing rock after rock.  
“This isn’t fair, dude!” Carlos yelped, doing his best to deflect the onslaught. He sounded distressed but Ultra could plainly see the smile on his and Jimmy’s faces. The mano-a-mano would have been more impressive had Carlos possessed a projection ability but the poor guy could only turn himself invisible, and only after a great deal of concentration.   
When their little duel threatened to derail the whole breakfast spread, Ultra stood up and conjured fields around each of them, isolating them from one another. She squeezed them a little tighter to get their attention.  
“Ultra! No fair!” Jimmy exclaimed, beating his fists against the invisible wall around him.  
“Respect the cooking process boys, and get out!” she exclaimed, levitating them out the door before releasing them. “Take it outside!”  
“Those guys drive me crazy,” Linnie Charleston muttered, tapping a clawed fingernail against the work surface. “Croissant, please.”  
Ultra nodded and handed over a pastry from the basket nearby.  
“You know, this is actually really nice.”  
“What is, Linnie?” she asked.  
“Seeing you doing all this.” Linnie gestured to the sizeable spread that was enough to feed the entire student body of the institute twice over. “You were so serious before, we didn’t think you cared about us. This is a nice turnaround.”  
Ultra felt a wave of guilt break over her, starting at her head and working right down to her toes. Linnie was like the oracle of the house. From her golden blonde hair and piercing blue eyes that were flecked with candy pink at the centre, she looked positively angelic, especially when you added her penchant for floaty clothes that always gave her the illusion of flight. But she was plagued with the mutant ability of perception. It didn’t sound like much when you described it as such but Linnie could see the truth in any situation, which Ultra found very threatening. Seeing the truth also gave her the uncanny trait of foreseeing future events.   
“Well, thanks Linnie,” Ultra replied after a hard swallow. Linnie regarded her for a moment and then nodded with a smile that was a little too knowing. Then she took her breakfast away with her, probably out into the garden where she usually chose to eat. Too many people in one place usually bothered her. Ultra smiled to herself. After all, she could relate to that all too well.  
As the hands on the clock ticked closer to nine, the herd in the kitchen thinned until only Logan remained, hidden behind a newspaper with a steaming cup of coffee in his hand. Ultra could see the steam drifting up and over the paper. She picked up the plate with his bacon sandwich and carried it over to him. He grunted his thanks as she gave him a brief kiss on the cheek. An article about some freak events at an abandoned warehouse caught her attention for a moment, especially when it turned out to be the same abandoned warehouse that had been the epicentre of their mutant scuffles a few days ago. Then her gaze drifted out the window to where Rogue and Bobby were walking across the pristinely landscaped gardens. There was a lightness about Rogue, not just because of the sunshine basking over her. Her aura was practically radiating, contentment oozing from every pore. Ultra couldn’t help a smile as she watched them. Leather gloves still kept their skin apart as they held hands but for the briefest of moments, she watched as Rogue stood up on her tiptoes and pecked her boyfriend on the lips.  
The contact lasted the smallest measure of a moment but the triumph that Ultra felt surged within her. There hadn’t been the tiniest flinch from Bobby and neither did he seem depleted from the kiss. The beam that lit up Rogue’s face was worth the teenage tantrum that Ultra had had to withstand during their first session. After years of trying to gain some control over her powers, just one intensive session had given Rogue just enough to be able to experience some intimacy with her devoted boyfriend. It was about bloody time. Of course, they had a longer battle to fight before a serious snog-fest would be on the cards but the time would come.  
“I saw that,” Logan growled, his lips curled into a self-satisfied smirk.  
Ultra grinned and gave him a playful nudge with her hip. “Quiet, you.”  
“Ultra feels at home, Ultra feels at home,” he chided in a sing-song voice. “The ice queen is thawing, the ice queen is thawing.”  
“And you’re going to get a slap if you carry on,” she replied, moving back to the kitchen area where she arranged a tray with a plate of hot eggs Benedict and an English-style teapot with cup, saucer and creamer full of milk. “Eat your breakfast.”  
“You know I don’t normally eat anything.”  
“Well you’re going to make an exception considering your dear, devoted sister has gone to the extreme effort of preparing something for you.”  
By way of an answer, Logan flapped the paper and bent his head to scrutinise the article that had caught her eye. “Cops are investigating the warehouse to try and figure out what happened there.”  
“Huh, good luck with that,” Ultra answered with a snort.  
“What did you do with the bodies?”  
“Turned them to lead and blasted them into the ocean.” It was a deadpan answer as if she had described her hanging the washing out. “I’ll focus on laying some mojo over the block that’ll tell the cops exactly what they want to know.”  
“Mind control?” Logan asked, frowning at her.  
“The one and only. It’s the most efficient means of evading prying eyes, don’t you think.” With that, she left the kitchen, levitating the breakfast tray along behind her.  
Charles’ personal chambers were on the third floor of the institute. Rather than take the scenic route up the sweeping staircases and down seemingly endless corridors, Ultra stopped mid-stride and floated up through the air, phasing through the separate floors with the tray close behind. She materialised outside an ornate oak door covered in intricate engravings. She raised her fist and knocked gently.  
The voice that answered her was soft and gentle, inviting her in. She opened the door wide and stepped back to allow the tray to pass her by. For a moment she reflected on how strange she felt, knocking at a door and waiting for permission. She hadn’t cared about decorum and etiquette for so long that to suddenly conform was almost alien.  
He wasn’t there when she went in but there was movement in the next room so he was probably getting ready.   
Charles’ suite was stunning, reflecting the regal English gent that he was. The top half of his walls were papered in a beautiful pale brown with a contrasting embossed pattern that shimmered depending on how the light hit it. Intricately carved coving softened the edges between the walls and ceiling, culminating in beautiful plaster ceiling roses around the light fixtures. White wood panelling adorned the bottom third of the walls, bringing the room in closer so that it almost hugged you. The elegant antique furniture all mismatched but managed to coordinate with one another by sheer luck rather than design; a Victorian-styled sofa and several Louis XV wing chairs sat in cahoots, all reupholstered in modern fabrics that complimented the morning-coffee hew of the room. A dark wood replica apothecary table served as neutral ground between the sofa and chairs, a vase of fresh, home-grown roses in the centre. Ultra directed the tray down onto the table, picking up the vase and transferring it to Charles’ desk.  
Just for a moment, she traced her fingers over the writing implements, especially the fancy pen set and his hand-carved writing box. The scent of expensive stationery and fountain pen ink hung over the desk, instantly making her want to create something; a novel, a sonnet or even a haiku. Then she thought back to the notebook that she had hurled down the corridor. She heaved a sigh, realising how petulant she must have seemed.   
The double doors to her right swung open and Charles rolled inside, dressed in a tasteful satin smoker’s jacket. As she moved over to the sitting area, it felt like she was right back in England about to address the Lord of the manor.   
“Good morning, my dear,” he greeted her warmly, manoeuvring his wheelchair expertly between the furniture.  
Ultra cleared her throat, suddenly feeling rather uncomfortable. Since rescuing him from Magneto’s clutches and bringing him out of his own mind, she didn’t quite know how to act around him. Delving around in someone else’s head always made her feel like she had violated them in some way, especially given the connection that the two of them had formed during that time. It was difficult to avoid learning how someone felt about you when you were swimming around, constantly rubbing up to different fragments of information. During his forced recovery in the institute’s sick bay under Jean Grey’s watchful eye, Ultra and Charles had talked a lot of things through but that didn’t alleviate the awkwardness.  
“So how’s the invalid today?” As soon as the words had left her mouth, Ultra hissed, wishing she could retract them. “Sorry Charles, I didn’t mean...”  
The old man chuckled, one hand raised. “I know, I know,” he said. “It’s fine.”  
Cue more throat-clearing on her part. “Er...I thought I’d make you some breakfast. Typically English, I suppose. I think I might have overdone it.” She gestured to the tea service as Charles helped himself.  
“Actually, it’s rather nice to have someone in the house who appreciates the power of a good cup of tea,” he mused. “Eggs Benedict.”  
“Yeah, I kind of got the message that it’s your favourite.” Yeah, when I was poking around your head looking for you.  
“Well, thank you,” Charles said, the smile never wavering.  
“How are you feeling?” As she met his eyes, Ultra remembered the deathly pallor and how, even when she had brought him out of unconsciousness, he had needed several days to recover from the ordeal. She had stayed by his side in the sick bay, not daring to leave him.  
“Much better,” Charles replied, sipping daintily at his cup. “You?”  
She shrugged as she sat in one of the deceptively comfortable wing chairs. “No harm done.”  
He regarded her for a moment with a critical eye as he put his cup and saucer down on the table. He picked up the plate with his eggs Benedict and began breaking into it, carving through the thick, crusty toast and bacon. “You know that I’m psychic,” he muttered.  
Ultra smiled, twisting her fingers together in her lap and avoiding his gaze. “What do you know, I am too.”  
“You took too much of a risk coming to rescue me,” he said, suddenly very serious. “I told you to stay home because I knew what Eric wanted.”  
She shrugged. “In all fairness, the message was quite garbled at the end. All I got was ‘gather the...’ and ‘don’t’. The fact that I knew precisely what you meant is irrelevant.”  
“But he could have killed you.”  
“That wasn’t the plan,” she answered. “He’d heard whispers about a Level Seven and he wanted to check things out for himself. Let’s face it; he doesn’t really want any mutant more powerful than him on the opposing team. Now he knows that this particular Level Seven is a force to be reckoned with.”  
“But it was reckless of you to come to my aid. I’m extremely grateful but I absolutely did not want you to be put at risk.”  
Ultra smiled not unkindly. “My whole life is a risk,” She said. “Every time someone learns how much power I have, they try and manipulate me to their own ends. To fight is all I’ve known. It was just nice to have something to fight for this time.”  
“You do seem to have reached some sort of peace within yourself.”  
She shrugged again. “Peace is too strong a word, I suppose. I don’t think I’ll ever be completely at peace with who and what I am. I can’t afford to get complacent.”  
“I’ve tried to create a safe space for you here so that you can live and flourish,” Charles said. “If I’d realised that it took my being kidnapped to get you to open up then I would have tried it sooner.”  
Ultra sniffed her amusement. “I have almost torn myself in two about living here,” she said. “You see, imagine being cast off by the very people that sired you and vowed to protect you just because you were different. I was forced to transition alone, having to figure out how to control the myriad of powers that chose to manifest all at once. I was very vulnerable then and was desperate for friends. I found someone and became the object of amusement. Exploitation became a watch-word. When I eventually got away, I found myself in the company of a radical activist group that tolerated me more because of my abilities than any personal feelings. I was their trump card that could tip the balance in their favour. I was never respected, only feared. I was very aware of the fact that the second I had outlived my usefulness I was gone. Then I was thrown into the path of William Stryker and was forced to endure more abuse. The end result of that is obvious. When he couldn’t control me, he was going to kill me despite the investment I represent to this day. Then I came here. For the past few months I have been waiting for the expiration date to appear. I have tested every boundary possible to try and speed up the process, to force your hand. You have treated me with nothing but respect. After all the things I’ve been through, to be respected is a lot more harrowing a prospect than to be feared or hunted. It has been easier to shut myself off from everyone around me in order to protect myself. I know this hasn’t been fair on you after everything you’ve done and everything you’ve put up with from me but this is the only way I know how to be.”  
“You feel very deeply, Ultra. I knew that the moment I met you, the same as I knew that the harsh exterior you had fortified was not your true self. Once I learned of your adamantium I had some idea of the ordeal you had been through because of what I have glimpsed in Logan’s mind. I knew that one day you would open up to me. Thank you.”  
Ultra shrugged and swallowed hard against the guilty tears that stung her eyes. She regretted every bitchy moment and snide comment and if she could go back and change everything she would. “Logan is the only one I felt I could connect with because we share the same experiences. He doesn’t know the ins and outs but there’s that familiarity.”  
“You are very alike in many ways,” Charles thought out loud. “It is very easy to think of you both as siblings.”  
“He’s my brother to the end,” she replied. “Which opened up a whole other facet, if I’m honest. Even though I am so powerful, he still wants to protect me. When we were looking for you in that warehouse, he wouldn’t let me pair with any other person. I’ve never had that before. I’ve never known what it’s like to have someone looking out for you and watching your back, no matter what.”  
“You have a whole institute of people that will do that,” Charles said, putting down his empty plate. He stretched forwards to take her hand in his. “Even though you tried to close yourself off from us, everyone in this school would have defended you to the end. Not because you are such an asset but because you are loved. I tried to get you to believe that once before.”  
“I didn’t want to hear it,” said Ultra.  
“We all had an idea of what you’d been through but we all wanted to help. I knew that we only could once you decided to let us. I somehow think that decision has been made.”  
“I don’t really need help, as such. I suppose all I need is support. I need to do something now. I’m sick of running or plotting or hiding. Yes, the Freedom Fighters were striving towards a noble goal but I was just a tool in their plans. I was never a part of it. Now I want to belong to something. I’ve got a lot to give.”  
Charles smiled. “I know. I’ve never seen Rogue look so happy before.”  
“I saw the paralysing fear in her face that day in the warehouse when I told her to power up. No one should have to live their lives that way. I’ve known what it’s like to be afraid of my powers and I don’t want anyone to have to go through that. Hopefully one day she won’t have to be scared anymore.”  
“I tried to help her but I kept hitting a blockage. Rogue can be very stubborn, especially when she doesn’t think something is working.”  
“I noticed. She tried playing the ‘you don’t know what it’s like’ card, but she is still a teenager after all. I proved that I know what I’m doing and with time I think she’ll be pleased with the results. I just hope she doesn’t take my ‘play around’ message too far.”  
Charles shook his head. “She won’t. She will accept the advice but she’s lived with too much caution and restraint to just let it all go now. She’ll keep her head, of that I’m sure.”  
“Well, it looks like you’re getting your wish after all.”  
“What wish is that?” he asked, frowning.  
“My staying on and helping train the kiddies.”  
“All I wish is for you to be happy, Ultra,” he replied. “I want you to find something that you love to do.”  
She thought for a moment, wondering what could possibly make her happy after so much misery. It was going to be a struggle. Then she remembered lurking outside Jean Grey’s classroom with her notebook and pencil, practically crushing her face against the glass. For the first time in forever she had been able to escape her own head. She knew that she had a very analytical mind and turning it to scientific problems seemed a fitting focal point for her energies. Ultra had always possessed a curiosity about the nature of genetic mutations, from something as benign as eye colour to the life-altering abilities that she shared with her fellows. If there was one genetic cause, why did the abilities differ to such a vast extent? If the cause could be identified, could there one day be a cure? What kind of moral and ethical problems would such a cure inflame? She wanted to be able to answer those questions and many more.   
Charles’ smile broadened as he watched the cogs turning in her head. No doubt he could hear her thoughts, for they screamed so loudly in her head that he must be able to.   
“It seems like you’ve made your decision,” he said.  
Ultra nodded slowly at first and then as the idea solidified in her mind the nod increased. “I think I have.”  
Charles rolled over to his desk and opened one of the side drawers, taking something out that he put on his lap. He turned back to face her, holding out the notebook that she had thrown away. She had been angry at herself for showing weakness that day, for allowing them to find out about her secret aspirations. Now it felt like a rite of passage as she looked at the blue notebook held tightly in Charles’ fist. She looked first at the book and then at him. His expression was completely open, even slightly excited. They both knew that together they could change the world and this was their first step.   
Charles bowed his head at her. “Shall we get started?”

   
Another sunset. Another day passed.  
Low carved another line into the small boulder at his feet and then stood back to view the tally marks. He tried very hard not to think of it as a grave. That familiar ache in his chest and his gut told him that he wasn’t trying hard enough. But that tiny grain of hope still remained. The hope that he was marking the days until she came home.  
Shuffling footsteps approached behind him but he didn’t turn around. “Nora, can’t I have just one hour of peace?” he asked, exasperated.  
“No,” she replied in a deadpan tone.  
Low rubbed his eyes and glanced over his shoulder at her. It might have been the dim light messing with his vision but Nora almost looked pleased about something. “What is it?”  
Her beautiful face, glowing in the fiery light from the horizon, broke into a smile. She just stood there, the breeze whipping her white summer dress into a frenzy around her as if it were alive.  
“Nora?” he prompted, his heart suddenly thundering in his chest.  
She took a measured breath and then she spoke to him. The words slammed into his ears as sure as if she had wielded a baseball bat. He almost had to ask her to repeat them but the weight resonated deep within his soul so that he knew exactly what she had said.  
“We’ve found her.”


End file.
